First thought – Why on planet earth one would use Manual Focus when you pay for an expensive Auto focus Camera?
Auto focus facility is excellent feature in any Digital SLR Camera, but it's not always to be depending upon. Various good photographers know exactly when to take control of the camera to get great shots in challenging situations. There are times when you need to shoot your images using Manual Focus on your camera and forget the Auto Focus facility provided.

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Manual Focusing:
Let us share some points, tips and some of the situations where you would use Manual Focusing.

1. 1. Low light photography: While taking shots in low light, OR shooting twilight images for sunsets, the contrast is also low, switch to manual focusing instead of Auto focus since the Auto focus mechanism depends on light and contrast to freeze on the focusing due to poor light condition your lens will always keep zooming in an out looking for a valid focusing point. Advance camera does provide AF assist lamp built in but that's not sufficient all the time and it won't work for this situation.

1. 1. Rule of Thirds' Compositions : Most of the Digital cameras have an Auto focus spot fixed i.e. in the center of the viewfinder. This means when you are composing the subject at one of the most used pictorial composition i.e. rule of thirds your subject will be out of focus. Turn the camera on to Manual Focus and focus the scene.
   2. Less Contrast: Let's take an example of a plain colored wall or any plain colored cloth where there is no or less contrast, no matter how bright the light is. If you try to focus on this wall or plain cloth where there is no contrast the AF on the camera will find it difficult to focus on it. All you can do is (temporarily) re-frame the shot so the spot of the camera is pointed on a place where there is some detail and press the shutter button half way down to lock focus and recompose the picture. Or you achieve focusing by focusing manually.
   3. Shooting wildlife: I have read in many magazine and literature that wildlife photography is a game of patience and its really important for the visitors (photographers) to be really quite in their habitat. The slightest noise made from your Auto focusing motor of the lens will alert the bird / mammal and you will miss out on a good opportunity to shoot a great shot. Wildlife are very sensitive to noise so put off your auto focus and shoot in manual mode.
   4. Fast action shots: While shooting a fast moving object or an action game and if you have put your camera on auto focus mode your AF will have a hard time to keep up with the changing distances of the moving object frequently.
   5. Shooting portraits : A good feature of the portrait is to keep the eye of the subject sharp. You often look into the eye of the subject, to achieve that we use wide aperture a smaller fno to blur the background. But at times while focusing if you set your camera to low fno i.e. 2.8 / 1.4 and using auto focus and if accidentally the focusing is on the tip of the nose or eyebrows the eye will not be sharp as you have the narrow depth of filed.
   6. Macro photography : Most of the time its tedious to focus using AF on a macro subject, the d.o.f. is so small the camera has no clue what we want to focus and it keeps on focusing erratically. You should take control and use Manual Focusing.

Expert Tip: Manual Focusing will help you to be in more control of the focusing all the time however its very tedious and time consuming.  www.f16.co.in editors do not promote to go on a shooting sphere but want to our readers to be aware and be apt to use Manual Focusing when needed.