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Part of the pleasure and challenge of using an older camera, one that trades modern automatic conveniences in favor of dials and knobs, is learning the inner mechanisms of how a camera works. When I first got into photography, I had no idea what was going on. My phone camera and my digital DSLR camera did such a good job of automatically adjusting the lighting, the focus, everything, all I had to do was choose the right moment and snap.

Only after some rolls with my film camera did I really appreciate the possibilities that a focusing ring, something that can adjust what distance is in focus, provides. Sometimes you only want the flowers in focus, other times you're trying to keep the action in the corner sharp while allowing the rest to slip into a blurry background. Of course, modern phones have portrait mode and select to focus options too. But on a phone, if I wanted a cat in focus, I would just select the cat, or the phone would automatically make sure the person in the frame is sharp and in focus. With a manual focus, there is no algorithm to determine objects or even areas, it is a purely mechanical process of distance. Adjusting the focusing ring adjusts the layers of distance, from 3 meters being in focus to 5 meters being in focus, etc.

A camera does not necessarily understand individual objects. For a lens, a range of things that are the same distance away is the same to it. An object blends into whatever is in its surroundings. It might be a face of a person, or the person themself, it can also be the person in a crowd, a whole scene out on the streets. Or more, it can be the whole landscape, anything the camera captures could be in focus.