Changed my mind about zone focusing after missing a shot at my daughter's recital

I was at the middle school gym in Portland last Saturday, shooting a dance recital on my Minolta, and I thought zone focusing at f8 would be fine for that stage. Every shot came out soft because the kids kept moving in and out of the 6-foot zone I guessed. Has anyone else found zone focusing unreliable in fast-moving indoor scenes?

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riverwhite14d agoMost Upvoted

Yeah I gotta say that "soft because the kids kept moving" part really hits home for me. Zone focusing works GREAT when your subjects stay put or move in a straight line, but kids on a stage are basically chaotic blobs that shift direction every second. I tried the same thing at my niece's play last winter with my OM-1 and f8 at 10 feet, and half the frames were mushy because the dancers kept stepping back into the blur zone. You basically need f16 or even f22 to get a safety net for that kind of movement, but then you're fighting shutter speed and ISO noise. The only fix I've found is to either use a flash or bump the ISO way up so you can stop down more, or just switch to framing tighter and prefocusing on a specific spot they hit. It's a hard lesson but now I only use zone focus outdoors or in empty rooms where nobody's gonna wander around unexpectedly.