MikeMck Loc: Southern Maryland on the Bay

Thank you

canon Lee

Hi F4 is too slow, I use F2.8 (faster get expensive). It doesn't matter what mode you are shooting in, as focus is a matter of where the focus box is placed. Shake can be helped by using a monopod. Shooting moving subjects is a matter of timing the motion, so you have a still moment. Pushing down hard on the shutter button will cause shake. At 8 feet away with high ISO you should have sharp images. You need a good RAW editing program like LightRoom. There you can adjust the color saturation which will sharpen the image, as well as correcting the WB. Unfortunately there is no fix for out of focus shots. Your background will brighten up using the shadow slider. I believe the focus is off because you are not focused on the faces, as the corner of the red house looks sharper. I feel some of the problem is that the image is over saturated, which blows out sharpness. Using P mode is a semi automatic mode, where the camera selects the speed and aperture. Do you know for a fact what your shutter speed was?

MikeMck Loc: Southern Maryland on the Bay

Thank you.

speters Loc: Grangeville/Idaho

You just plain missed the focus! Put your focus point (whichever one) right over your desired area of sharpness!

TBPJr Loc: South Carolina

It seems to me that you probably have a center focus point selected and you took the picture(s) composed as you wanted with the focus point between the main subjects (the actors). Using "P" mode is not the problem (although it does tend to sacrifice depth of field)--you should consider using the the 61-point automatic selection AF mode (which is available with the EF 24-105 lens)--it does tend to select the closest subjects, but that will work with a stage presentation. All this is in the 5DIII manual at pages 70-86.

The other alternative is to use a single center focus point, lock the focus on the subject (actor) you want in focus by depressing and holding the shutter button half-way, then recompose (frame to capture the scene as you want), and take the picture by pressing the shutter button completely. This takes a little more time for each shot (and you can not recompose your capture with zoom--the focus required would probably change but your locked focus would not adapt) but it has the virtue of ensuring you choose the point of focus. It will not work as well as the all-points AF in fast-moving scene captures.

Good luck!

MikeMck Loc: Southern Maryland on the Bay

Thank you!

jcdonelson

Almost always use "spot" focus. Not sure what Cannon calls it, but 95% of the time that's what you need to do.
I also recommend using back button focus, for all the reasons you can google up. For a shoot like this I would have used continuous focus and kept the focus button mashed so I could grab a shot at any time.
At 1/100th it was likely not camera shake nor motion blur.
at f/5, 67mm 8ft your DOF was 1' 3", and as has been stated you were back focused.
At f2.8 it would have been 8", so some of the photo would have has soft focus at best.
At f1.4 DOF would have been 4".
I think all your settings were okish, just the focus was off.. if you were doing focus and recompose then stop it! It rarely works.
Google "DOF calculator" and experiment. It was an eye opener for me, and teaches you about focus and recompose....
Better to have an in focus image and crop, than an out of focus image and delete.

MikeMck Loc: Southern Maryland on the Bay

Thank you. I have a Christmas play coming up.

jcdonelson

Well your welcome. You have a pro level camera - so let me give some advice, or at least what I did.
I spent a similar amount for money on a Nikon, so I figured it might make sense to spend a little bit more the really learn how to use it.
I found a great tutorial on Lynda (for my camera) and it totally changed everything. There is one there for your camera by Ben Long who will give you great advice.
There is also some great ACR, LR, PS courses from Julieanne Kost, who has worked for adobe for the past 20 years (I recommend hers over others on there the Ben Long one is older).
She has a PS basic and one specifically for photography, and I think one for ACR/Bridge.
Again, I am spending 120.00/yr on Adobe, so wouldn't it make a lot of sense to invest a bit more to really learn how to use it?
Youtube is great but these course are well done, focused and have supplementary material.
I only subscribed for 2 months and watched what I needed. Your mileage may vary.
Full disclosure:
I have nothing to do with these people or Lynda.com. I wish I could meet them!

gvarner Loc: Central Oregon Coast

I use Program mode all the time indoors, low light, but also with Auto-ISO. I would also use my 35mm f1.8 DX lens on my D7000, equivalent to about 55mm on a full frame sensor. You can always crop in a bit and the shorter focal length is a bit more forgiving on focusing issues, I think. Spot focus for sure. If they don't move around much, set it a lock it in. If you can, use live view and magnify it while focusing. Setting the shutter to fire only on focus lock might help too.