Why does my XT-4 still attempt to focus despite being in manual mode?

Kevaf wrote:

I do a lot of landscape photography, and I haven’t done a whole lot with it apart from a few trips. I’m not super well-versed in photography lingo, but I love to use depth of field, where something in the distance is in focus and something in the foreground is out of focus.

I’m using the Fujifilm 16-80mm lens, and I’ve tried several different settings.

In manual focus mode, I get the focus exactly how I want it, and then when I press the shutter button, the camera adjusts to sharpen the out-of-focus elements. It counteracts my manual efforts, and is infuriating.

Any advice on how to completely disable auto adjustments would be great! Thanks!

In manual focus mode, you will be seeing a wide-open aperture view by default (for better manual focusing). The change you see when half-pressing is the camera stopping down to shooting aperture (where the ring is set) - it’s not refocusing, you are now just seeing an accurate DOF preview (if your lens is set wide open you should see no significant change when pressing the shutter button).

There is a DOF preview option you can assign to a custom function button that will enable a real-time stopped-down view without half-pressing the shutter button, but I usually just toggle between "no-press" to focus wide open (usually with peaking full-screen, or just magnification on a particular detail), and a half-press to see (and adjust) the DOF using the aperture ring as necessary.