Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ200 User Manual page 89

Background blur or "Bokeh" from shallow DOF
The normal operation of the Zoom slide switch on the side of the lens
barrel can be programmed to act as a manual focus lever. This can be
set up in the "tools" menu.
A more satisfactory way to achieve this is to program the functionality of
the Fn3 button to select the operation of this switch to be either Zoom or
Focus operation. I will discuss the programming of the function buttons
later in the guidebook see page. (page 146)
During the manual focus mode, the focus button on the side of the lens
will force the camera to do an automatic focus
using your defined focus point. This is useful for
quickly setting the camera to the approximate
focus position.
You can then use the control wheel/navigation
buttons to fine tune this position.
So we can see that the manual focus facility is
very useful when any one of the automatic focus
methods fails to identify the subject from the background. This can either
be through lack of subject contrast, the subject being too small or from
very poor light on the subject.
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