Digital Photography Tips - Focusing you digital camera on out of centre subjects

Say you want to take a photograph of your partner, who is standing in the foreground, against a backdrop of distant hills. Luckily you've remember about the rule of thirds so you want to compose the photograph so your partner is off centre, to the left. But how do you ensure he or she is in focus as the camera mostly focuses on what's in the centre of the photo?

The simple answerer is to firstly compose the photo so your partner is in the centre and press the shutter half way down, thus pre-focusing the camera, then re-compose the photo to how you want it and press the shutter the rest of the way down to finish taking the photo.

However, if you had time you could try experimenting with various settings an compositions such as - setting your camera to Landscape, thus ensuring the maximum depth of field. This way, you may not need to pre-focus the camera. The Landscape setting sets a camera so everything from a few feet way to infinity is in focus. This setting works best when there is good light.

You may have a digital camera that is smart enough to detect whether a subject is in the foreground and off centre and will do all the figuring out and focusing for you such as the Canon Powershot A710 IS with its Flexible focusing. As Canon put it, a "9-point AiAF to keep even off-centre subjects sharply in focus, or use FlexiZone AF/AE to manually select a focus point"