Understanding my Focusing problems: Single focus point (Page 2): Hi RWR, I agree with you, I do find myself in situation where finding appropriate settings takes the fun out of it. And...

catalint Loc: oslo

RWR wrote:

In my opinion, you are handicapping yourself by your choice of equipment. To quickly and easily nail focus on both subjects I would use a manual focus lens with a depth of field scale. And your subjects won't run out of patience while you're fiddling with depth of field charts, AFC, AFS, focus here, focus there ... They may even want to come back for another session! And indeed a charming session that was!

Hi RWR,
I agree with you, I do find myself in situation where finding appropriate settings takes the fun out of it. And sometime I dont get the shot as I want, cause I spend time on fiddling with settings. My problem is there is no budget in buying any new lenses for my newly D750. For one year at least, i'm stuck with what I have. As I started to get the hang of it, and can tell myself exposure and ISO before taking a picture or a sample, I hope to be able to learn as much about DOF and AF-S and AF-C and master it as good as I can without looking at any charts or apps. I have to start somewhere, so it does not hurt to go through this as well. I dont make money on photography nor I sell pictures. Hobby dude here, so missing out here and there until, wont do damage. Just frustration to learn from.

rook2c4 Loc: Philadelphia, PA USA

I'd also like to add:
The DOF preview button (if your camera has it) can be helpful if you're not good at estimating distances or you don't have a DOF chart with you.

catalint Loc: oslo

rook2c4 wrote:

I'd also like to add:
The DOF preview button (if your camera has it) can be helpful if you're not good at estimating distances or you don't have a DOF chart with you.

Wow,, I just discovered something. Even thou I've seen that Pv button, I never cared to look at it. I just did a google search and I read how to use it. It's seems like something I should try to use a little more.
Thank you very much Rook2c4 .

RWR Loc: La Mesa, CA

catalint wrote:

Wow,, I just discovered something. Even thou I've seen that Pv button, I never cared to look at it. I just did a google search and I read how to use it. It's seems like something I should try to use a little more.
Thank you very much Rook2c4 .

And forget about AF-C/AF-S!

rwilson1942 Loc: Houston, TX

If I were shooting the attached photo, my focus point would be the left eye of the child (right eye as viewed in camera), i would use an aperture that would get the woman's face in reasonable focus and let the background go out of focus.
In the download, it looks like your focus point was on the woman making it difficult to get the child's face in focus since most of your DoF will fall behind the focus point..
Experiment with focusing at different points and using different apertures.
For portraits , the usual goal is to have the subject's eyes sharp and the background as soft as possible.
That is why lenses with wide maximum apertures (f2.8, f1.4) are popular with portrait photographers.

rook2c4 Loc: Philadelphia, PA USA

catalint wrote:

Wow,, I just discovered something. Even thou I've seen that Pv button, I never cared to look at it. I just did a google search and I read how to use it. It's seems like something I should try to use a little more.
Thank you very much Rook2c4 .

Glad to be of help. I think there are many photographers who either don't know what the button does or simply forget that it is there. I use it quite often. Of course at f/16 or f/22 it is not very useful, as the preview makes it too dark in the viewfinder to see details. But at those aperture settings, most stuff is in focus anyway.

catalint Loc: oslo

rwilson1942 wrote:

If I were shooting the attached photo, my focus po... (show quote)

Well observed Rwilson1942. To begin with, I was focusing on my niece. But since she was in slow movement, my thoughts are that I lost the focus of her upon pressing the shutter release. That's why I asked if that was either cause shutter speed or back focusing. My goal here was just to have my niece and my sister in focus. I am going through the pictures of yesterday, and see I have several pictures suffering from the same focusing problem. Since all those pictures are in the same series, each and one has the same flaw. My sister is in focus on all pictures, not my niece. I received lots of useful information today. It makes me think that all I should have done was switch to AF-C and raise my shutter speed a little more. This will be my homework for next shootout.

I wonder how this picture would look from 10m (30ft as someone wrote) with an aperture og F2.8 or 1.4 . Wouldn't it make a little soft ? In order to get that sharp picture from a little distance, wouldn't it require a smaller aperture ? From my experience with my previous kit, (nikon d7100 + sigma 17-50 2.8) unless I am close to the subject I would not get that sharp detail with aperture of 2.8.

catalint Loc: oslo

Thank you all for taking the time and given your thoughts.
From today I learned that I need to be more careful when to use AF-S and AF-C. At the same time, the function of the Pv button in front can be useful in many situation. It will give me that preview while looking through the viewfinder. I will also try using DOF apps in order to give me more practice. All this I will have to put in practice so I can learn them by heart and will be able to predict my settings better.

My two cents on the sample picture, is that I should have used a faster shutter speed and kept the focus locked on my niece. I did got used to the BBF, dont know why I did not used it here.
Either AF-S or AF-C would have done the job, (maybe better if using AF-C), if I had faster shutter speed, and locked focus before pressing.

speters Loc: Grangeville/Idaho

catalint wrote:

Hi fellow hogs,

For a while I have had this challenge regarding focusing correctly. This is not a matter of "how-to", but rather "What Am I doing wrong?". Yes I've been googling, and watched this and that, but I can't get answers from that. So I hope a good eye here can see what's wrong.

Case is like this. Dont remember exactly when I did, but like 2 years ago, I started using single focus point. Also my camera is mostly on M-mode. Camera is on AF-S most of the time. Sometimes I switch to AF-C when lot's of motion. Ofte I need to move the focus point a little to the left , right, up or down, depending. Having one single object as subject, I have no problems, but I am not happy with pictures where I have like two three persons in the picture. One persons will be focused, the other one is slightly out of focus. For me it looks like single point focusing has a very small radius. Let say you have 3 persons in the frame, you point in the middle, focus and shoot. While the middle will be in focus and sharp, it gets less sharp further from the center. I know AF-S should be used with dead stationary objects, I read it somewhere. Does this mean one should switch to AF-C as soon as you have a little movement ? Like my little niece in the picture below. She is actually in movement since my sister is swinging her. but it wasn't fast.

So how do you focus, correctly for the whole frame with single AF point?

Below is a picture to show you what I mean. My sister and one of my nieces, taken yesterday. I was like 10m away from them, and took this picture at full zoom from my 24-120mm Nikon F4.5. My sister is looking good and sharp (could have been better also in my opinion), while my niece is a little blurred. From the exif data I see I should have probably raised up the shutter speed a little more, and maybe I would have had both as sharp? Or is it cause my camera was back focusing on my sister? I can't determine if this it's clearly from low shutter speed or wrong focusing system.

What settings would you fellow hogs have used in this kind of situation ? I know lot's of you also swear to single focusing point, so I hope to hear if you encountered this problem. I do not think there is something wrong with the equipment, it has to be ME. I need to improve.

Hi fellow hogs, br br For a while I have had thi... (show quote)

The way you put it, "the single point focus having a small radius" describes the depth of field ( which you should control before you take the picture, by setting the appropriate aperture. For a shallow DOF you need to open the aperture and for increasing it you set a smaller one. You can easily practice that with stationary subjects to get a feel of which aperture will give you how much DOF in a given situation, pretty soon it will be second nature to you!

JPL

catalint wrote:

Hi fellow hogs,

For a while I have had this challenge regarding focusing correctly. This is not a matter of "how-to", but rather "What Am I doing wrong?". Yes I've been googling, and watched this and that, but I can't get answers from that. So I hope a good eye here can see what's wrong.

Case is like this. Dont remember exactly when I did, but like 2 years ago, I started using single focus point. Also my camera is mostly on M-mode. Camera is on AF-S most of the time. Sometimes I switch to AF-C when lot's of motion. Ofte I need to move the focus point a little to the left , right, up or down, depending. Having one single object as subject, I have no problems, but I am not happy with pictures where I have like two three persons in the picture. One persons will be focused, the other one is slightly out of focus. For me it looks like single point focusing has a very small radius. Let say you have 3 persons in the frame, you point in the middle, focus and shoot. While the middle will be in focus and sharp, it gets less sharp further from the center. I know AF-S should be used with dead stationary objects, I read it somewhere. Does this mean one should switch to AF-C as soon as you have a little movement ? Like my little niece in the picture below. She is actually in movement since my sister is swinging her. but it wasn't fast.

So how do you focus, correctly for the whole frame with single AF point?

Below is a picture to show you what I mean. My sister and one of my nieces, taken yesterday. I was like 10m away from them, and took this picture at full zoom from my 24-120mm Nikon F4.5. My sister is looking good and sharp (could have been better also in my opinion), while my niece is a little blurred. From the exif data I see I should have probably raised up the shutter speed a little more, and maybe I would have had both as sharp? Or is it cause my camera was back focusing on my sister? I can't determine if this it's clearly from low shutter speed or wrong focusing system.

What settings would you fellow hogs have used in this kind of situation ? I know lot's of you also swear to single focusing point, so I hope to hear if you encountered this problem. I do not think there is something wrong with the equipment, it has to be ME. I need to improve.

Hi fellow hogs, br br For a while I have had thi... (show quote)

The problem is that you do not focus the whole frame by choosing focus points. The focus point is to decide what part of the frame is in focus because usually it is not an option to have the whole frame in focus. The rest depends on the aperture and type of lens you are using. I see others are explaining this in more details so I stop here.

canon Lee

I use single point only with small objects like close up parts of an object or head shots that aren't to close up... single point would distort the face then.... single shots are best for back lit shots ....where you want the exposure to be good.. too much sky =dark exposure.. ..

canon Lee

catalint wrote:

Hi fellow hogs,

For a while I have had this challenge regarding focusing correctly. This is not a matter of "how-to", but rather "What Am I doing wrong?". Yes I've been googling, and watched this and that, but I can't get answers from that. So I hope a good eye here can see what's wrong.

Case is like this. Dont remember exactly when I did, but like 2 years ago, I started using single focus point. Also my camera is mostly on M-mode. Camera is on AF-S most of the time. Sometimes I switch to AF-C when lot's of motion. Ofte I need to move the focus point a little to the left , right, up or down, depending. Having one single object as subject, I have no problems, but I am not happy with pictures where I have like two three persons in the picture. One persons will be focused, the other one is slightly out of focus. For me it looks like single point focusing has a very small radius. Let say you have 3 persons in the frame, you point in the middle, focus and shoot. While the middle will be in focus and sharp, it gets less sharp further from the center. I know AF-S should be used with dead stationary objects, I read it somewhere. Does this mean one should switch to AF-C as soon as you have a little movement ? Like my little niece in the picture below. She is actually in movement since my sister is swinging her. but it wasn't fast.

So how do you focus, correctly for the whole frame with single AF point?

Below is a picture to show you what I mean. My sister and one of my nieces, taken yesterday. I was like 10m away from them, and took this picture at full zoom from my 24-120mm Nikon F4.5. My sister is looking good and sharp (could have been better also in my opinion), while my niece is a little blurred. From the exif data I see I should have probably raised up the shutter speed a little more, and maybe I would have had both as sharp? Or is it cause my camera was back focusing on my sister? I can't determine if this it's clearly from low shutter speed or wrong focusing system.

What settings would you fellow hogs have used in this kind of situation ? I know lot's of you also swear to single focusing point, so I hope to hear if you encountered this problem. I do not think there is something wrong with the equipment, it has to be ME. I need to improve.

Hi fellow hogs, br br For a while I have had thi... (show quote)

your shot looks a bit soft.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

What MtnMan said.

joseph premanandan

sometimes using a tripod will help especially if you are using a slow shutter speed and a small aperture.even though single focus point is ideal for most of the circumstances,it might be a good idea to use multiple focus points and see how that works or you can do focus stacking even for your portrait photos even though it is mostly done for landscape photography,joseph

jackpi Loc: Southwest Ohio

MtnMan wrote:

The issue is Depth of Field (DOF). br br Your ca... (show quote)

At 10m, not 10ft. DOF is 1.86m (over 6ft)