So, going to shoot some riding tonight with my 550d, and I’m after some advice re focus when using video.

I’ll be filming some riding down a set of steps, and as such the subject (rider) will be moving away/towards the camera, now I don’t want to be manually focusing using the lens (not had enough practice at this so will probably twist the wrong way) and I’m not keen on the continuous auto focus the camera itself tries to do.

So question is, can I just use a smaller aperture and increase the amount of the area that is in focus, ie, set the largest number (smallest) aperture I can and the whole scene will be in focus (more or less)?

Any other tips (and tips for riding nasty steps with corners and bridges in the middle)?

Yup that should work fine. Have a google of hyperfocal distances if you haven’t already.

yes

the issue is that you will cut down the amount of light which may cause the camera to bump the ISO right up or the whole scene very dark. depends how much light there is.

Well it will be evening, so I’m guessing that will be a problem! May well just have to accept smaller focus range and shoot multiple angle and stitch back together in post?

depends how good the sensor is and if you are shooting HD. If your final output is going to be a small image on youtube etc then pushing the sensitivity/gain/ISO doesn’t really matter.

I’d experiment with a moving object first.