Spring is finally here in West Tennessee. Flowers are blooming; my allergies are in high gear to prove it. The warmer weather always brings my family outside. One our favorite things to do in the spring is go to the ball field to watch our friend’s son play baseball. Of course I never go to the ball park without my camera.
I noticed recently that my Nikon D50 camera had a horribly long delay in the auto focus that I was missing the action a lot of photographs. Normally I am quite lazy and want everything done for me when I take photos. Auto focus, auto aperture, auto flash, auto everything. I just want to point and shoot to get the desired results. Unfortunately that doesn’t always work out.
To capture all of the baseball action I knew I would have to go back to manual focus. It really isn’t as difficult as it sounds. All I had to do was flip the little lever next to the lens from AF to M. The outer ring of my lens can then be rotated by hand to manually focus through the viewfinder. It was as simple as looking through the viewfinder and rotating the focus ring until the subject appeared crisp and clear. I set my focus on one of the batters at home plate and waited until our friend’s son was running from third towards home plate. The auto focus delay was gone and I could repeatedly take photos capturing all the action. 
I highly recommend reading your manual to find out how to turn off the auto focus on your camera. Practice ahead of time before you need to really turn off the auto focus. And don’t forget to set the auto focus back on your camera when you are finished with the manual focus. The majority of the times auto focus will get you’re the desired results but knowing how to switch to manual focus when you need it can be a great photo saver.