Bram boy Loc: Vancouver Island B.C. Canada

You can repeat it a lot simpler by using back button focus . It will lock where
Ever you choose and stay there

Bram boy Loc: Vancouver Island B.C. Canada

It's probably just focused on the butter cup . With camera movement and two
Slow a shutter

jimmya Loc: Phoenix

I'd suggest manual focus.

zerobeat

If I were to try this, I would line up the shot, let the auto focus do its thing and continue to hold the button half way down, then slightly turn the lens to put it out of focus.

Don't know why you want it in auto focus to begin with.

marcomarks Loc: Ft. Myers, FL

I'd be more concerned with learning how to NOT get the effect for most times when you don't want it. I can't imagine why auto focus of any camera would do that bad of a job. Maybe a very long zoom setting with a very wide aperture? I don't see movement blur. The flower in the front is quite distinct although blurred.

Personally, I'd take it clean and crisp then add blur later in post editing so I have flexibility.

garygrafic Loc: South Florida

I just thought of a bit of brilliance. I'll bet this opens a large can of worms.
The more you do in Post, the further you remove yourself from photography, you're on your way to being a Graphic Designer.

marcomarks Loc: Ft. Myers, FL

That argument has already had at least 1,000 pages done on it here from those who never post edit versus those who post edit a lot.

My logic is that if you have a non-blurred photo originally and you blur it later in editing you have flexibility to blur as much as you want, blur as little as you need for some applications, have no blur for certain applications, and there are many option levels. Take a photo 1,000 miles away from home, blur it on the spot, and there are no options when you get back unless you take others that are more or less blurred while you're there. How would that differ from starting with a sharp one and blurring later? It wouldn't unless it's a specific type of blur that software can't do and it can only be achieved with wide f/stop on a certain brand and model of lens.

Compose and take a scene of a Fall bright colored tree with other trees behind it and shoot as crisp and clean as possible and you can use it as a stand alone Fall scene. Pump up the color and contrast some and it becomes eye-popping to the general public but not realistic to the trained eye. Blur it a bit and fade the color saturation a little and it can become a background for a portrait layered on top in editing. Blur it a lot and even change the colors of all the components of the photo and it can be a surrealistic artistic expression of reality. Use an HDR simulation software on it and it can become deeply disturbing or excessively beautiful beyond the abilities of a camera. Use a Kaleidoscope software on it and you can create a moving circular animation of hundreds and thousands of clear crisp chunks of what seem to be moving glass images. Flexibility of having an initial infocus crisp photo and post editing makes this all possible.

Post editing also adds flexibility and ability to add or subtract from what you thought was perfect when you were there. Looking into a tiny hole that's less than 1" across to shoot a scene that may be miles wide is not perfect. Looking at a 3" LCD screen in the sunlight that causes screen glare so you can't see what you're shooting very well is not perfect either. Your result isn't always what you thought it was going to be. The whole process of taking a photo is not perfect. But when you learn your result isn't perfect, possibly because the environment or the camera itself wasn't perfect, you can adjust with editing.

I do real estate photography as a living. I shoot exteriors of houses first. The walls may not be straight from the angle I'm at compared to the front of the house. I can't straighten them by carrying a ladder with me to shoot from, or get expensive perspective adjusting lenses, etc. So I shoot with the walls as close to straight as possible and Photoshop ACR has a simple button to align them. Blue skies are more blue on certain angles from the sun and less blue and pale at other angles. So I use ACR to pump up the blue sky saturation on some and leave it alone on others so they all match. When I shoot interiors the walls or door frames near the very wide angle lens may be slightly bowed by barrel distortion or my tripod might not be perfectly level. ACR's alignment button back at my office saves me again.

Color temperature in a house may be all over the place with CFL bulbs (yellowish), Tungsten bulbs (orange), LED bulbs (pure white or a little blue), and fluorescent tube bulbs (green and/or yellow). I don't have time to take 75 photos of the inside of a home and adjust color balance for every single one because I need to be gone in 1 hour and 20 minutes. Photoshop ACR auto-adjusts temperature and I many times tweak it slightly to make the interior paint of the home match what I actually saw in person because ACR wasn't there to see it.

The camera does it's best but one's eye is many times more accurate and a photo requires post editing to achieve what you would like to think is perfection.

I suppose this is mostly a controversy that exists between those who go on vacation and will sit in one spot for 15 minutes to an hour to get the "Just right" perfection they hope to achieve versus those who want to cover 150 miles that day on vacation and shoot 200 shots while they're at it and "fix it in the mix" later. Or the minimalist photographer who wants to believe they can achieve perfection personally versus the commercial shooter who feels that's not possible and everything can be enhanced to improve perfection.

Even Ansel Adams, who sat out in the wilderness for a week or more eating canned beans and jerky before taking just one shot, came home and "edited" in his darkroom with dodging and burning to get the result he wanted to see. The camera was a tool to capture with and his darkroom work and eye created his idea of perfection later. He would never ever claim that he took a perfect photo on the spot and refuse to edit himself. So if editing is cheating and being a graphic artist, the finest photographers in the world are all cheaters and graphic artists too.

There... now the volumes of pages of contrasting views can really get started again...

carl hervol Loc: jacksonville florida

This is a thing you might try.use a old filter and cover it with a very lite coat of oil it works another think take a old filter and put finger nail polish around the out side leaving the center the size of a dime un touched ,i made up filters with different colors you will use these when doing wedding shot .I pick up old filters at the local camera shop 2 to 4 bucks.

GENorkus Loc: Washington Twp, Michigan

Things like that are what we used to do back in the analog days! (Around the outer portions of the glass/filter only though.) Now days, post processing will do similar so why bother having to clean things?

If the photo happened all on it's own, it may have been from the temperature and humidity at the time of the shot. Condensation works pretty good to "blur" things!

FYI:
During some night football games, condensation gets all over the outside of my lens. I use a lens hood so the glass/filter stays clear.

Just a thought.

carl hervol Loc: jacksonville florida

I do not PP if i can't right the first time i'm not going to try.

Gary A Logsdon Loc: Winter Springs, FL

Gostei, Parabens....so americano morando em Rio Bonito, RJ. Your advise was very good and your english is better than mine. Love to see you work.

wayne-03 Loc: Minnesota

Photoshop

(Download)


(Download)

garceh Loc: florida

I agree. But, he may want to re-edit line 3.

Meives Loc: FORT LAUDERDALE

Best when you ask a question like this, click on "store original" and we can check the camera data for details. Thanks, David

Bare Loc: SoCal

What camera do you use? How many points can you set up in you camera to focus on? Some camera have several choices so it could be trying to focus someplace other that where you want it to. What was the F-stop you were using? If you are using a wide open lens, smaller numbers, your depth of field (DOF) will be much shorter than a higher number. Also the amount of zoom can affect the DOF, the shorter the the lens length, the shorter the DOF. If your using a macro lens, again the DOF will be shorter. Any or all these could be affecting the shot. And it's not totally unusual for the AF to fail occasionally. Get out the book and make sure everything is set up right.