Set your eyes upon San Juan Capistrano, an old Spanish town known as home to thousands of cliff swallows who return to nest there each year, and also as the site of one of the twenty-one Californian missions that are scattered along the famous El Camino Real.
El Camino Real, translated as “The Royal Road,” connects all 21 Spanish missions on a single route and was originally created as a group of outposts by Spaniards and Mexicans in the mid-18th century to secure their power over a New California. Spanning 600 miles, each mission was set up to be only a day apart, facilitating safe travel for all those venturing on its path. Today, the road extends from San Diego all the way up to San Francisco, and is a true testament to California’s rich history. San Juan Capistrano is home is to the third mission on the northbound route.
Mission San Juan Capistrano is at the heart of this little town, and everywhere you look you can see the mark it’s made, whether through Santa Maria votive statues, rosaries strung upon car rearview mirrors, or crosses that seem to turn up on top of every building.
I wanted to hone in on some of these divine elements that reflect San Juan Capistrano’s rich history, and in the process play with the focus features on my Samsung SMART CAMERA.
The Samsung SMART CAMERA comes with a Hybrid Autofocus System, which is relatively new in the camera world, and combines both phase and contrast detection.
- Phase Detection: Detects the speed and distance of your subject, allowing you to capture quick scenes with accuracy and clarity. Great for moving subjects or subjects with in low-light situations.
- Contrast Detection: Focuses based on contrast differences in a scene. Great for highly-detailed stationary objects, but can be difficult in low-light situations where contrast is low.
By combining both types, a Hybrid Autofocus System gives you the ability to shoot moving subjects, high-detail subjects and low-light subjects with speed and agility.
The Samsung SMART CAMERA offers a variety of AF settings. Some of my favorites include:
- Touch AF: Tap your camera’s LED touch screen where you’d like the focus to be and it will adjust accordingly.
- Tracking AF: Great for moving objects. Hold your shutter halfway down to focus on your subject. The camera will then track the moving object until you’re ready to shoot.
- One touch shot: Very similar to “Touch AF,” but it will instantaneously take a photo once you tap your focus point on the LED touch screen.
You can access these features by clicking the “MENU” button and, while under the camera icon tab, scrolling down to “Touch AF.”
Samsung NX300’s “MF Assist” feature gives you an enlarged view of your subject to help you focus.
Of course, if you want to have complete control over where your focus lies, you can always swap to Manual Focus. A nifty quirk that the Samsung NX300 offers in this regard is a helpful “enlarged display.” Basically what that means is that when you turn your lens to focus on a subject, your LED touch screen will display an enlarged version of that subject, allowing you to focus more accurately.
One of the worst surprises in photography is realizing a great shot is out of focus. By playing around with and mastering the different focus features on your camera, you can make sure your photos come out with a clean, high quality look.
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