Moles Loc: South Carolina

I take sports photos almost exclusively. I sometimes have problem with faces being not quite in focus, where the rest of the photo is pretty sharp. I have tried putting the auto focus point right on the face, presetting focus, etc. but nothing works. The attached photo was shot with a Nikon D4, 70-200 2.8. Most of my photos do have sharp faces, but too many don't.

Any suggestions?

St3v3M Loc: 35,000 feet

Hey Moles, I am not sure I understand your question as the front skiers face looks pretty in-focus.

Front Skier

klaesser Loc: Monmouth Oregon

Were you trying to get both skiers in focus, if so this appears to be a depth of field problem. What mode are you shooting in? What was your aperture setting? What was the F-stop? None of this shows in your metadata. Faster shutter speed may help.
Really hard to say without your metadata

Moles Loc: South Carolina

Thanks, I would like to think you are right, and I'm just being hard on myself. But I would like to see clear separation between the teeth and skin contrast.

Moles Loc: South Carolina

No, just the italian skier is supposed to be in focus. Shot in Shutter priority, 1000th, aperture somewhere between 2.8 and 4

St3v3M Loc: 35,000 feet

The weather is overcast and snow is falling, she is moving and you are shooting at a small depth of field and you want more separation between her teeth and skin? Either boost contrast in camera or in post, but I like it the way it is. Steve

Wahawk Loc: NE IA

Don't forget that with motion subjects like this it will be nearly impossible to get that kind of sharpness without super high speed, super fast focusing and probably strong flash units!

The focus looks very good to me!

Skellum0

I also mostly shoot action. Unfortunately I can never get the action to happen in studio so I always end up compromising, most with less than ideal light. I would be happy with the shot you took in the circumstances ( though snow can give beautiful light).

If you want the front skier sharper, then you could of course drop the shutter speed (1/1000 is probably overkill as they don't look to be going really fast) and therefore use a smaller aperture so that a bigger area is in focus. However, in my opinion the overall shot would suffer as the DOF Iperfect for the shot.

Meives Loc: FORT LAUDERDALE

[quote=Moles]When ever you ask for help of this sort, you should post with clicking on "store original". Better download and the camera data will help for discussion. David

ebbote Loc: Hockley, Texas

I blew her face up to 400% and see absolutely nothing wrong with her face. Her eyes, teeth, nose, glasses, hair
and cheeks are all sharp.

Weddingguy Loc: British Columbia - Canada

An auto-focus camera focuses on contrast, and if there is more contrast or light in your background, the camera tends to go there for a focusing point. Many think that the camera focuses only on the little red dot in the viewfinder. In fact that little red dot only indicates which focal point it is using.

Focusing on eyes is fine for close up stuff, but if you are a wee bit back from the subject the camera sees much more than just the eyes, so picks whatever has the most contrast in the focal area. For example in the image below . . . the camera would see approximately the amount in the circle to choose a focal point. As you can see, the area with the most contrast isn't the eyes, even although that is what is in the centre of the circle and
is what YOU want to focus on. It would probably go for the very high contrast of the stocking hung behind the subject. That would result in the eyes being out of focus.
Shooting is a three step process with auto-focus. Push the shutter release half way down and the camera . The 2nd step is to recompose. The 3rd step is to push the shutter release the rest of the way to fire the shutter.
For every picture I take, I decide on a point on which to focus, in an area that doesn't have a background which could compete for attention. (For example I might focus on the "X" in the image below that is about the same distance from the camera as the eyes that I want in perfect focus) Then I recompose the picture in my viewfinder while still holding the shutter release half way down . . then shoot. Of course this method is very difficult with moving subjects.

Every shot . . . always . . . is focus . . . recompose . . . shoot

veralisa296 Loc: New Jersey

Just to try something, I used dodge & burn on her face...dodge on her teeth to whiten (and increase contrast) and also on the goggles. Burn on the eyes, contrast increased. Actually, the difference is negligible, your photograph looks great as is. But when in doubt, D&B!

veralisa296 Loc: New Jersey

Moles Loc: South Carolina

Thanks a lot! I think you may have something there, as there are normally bright multi-colored uniforms with a lot of contrast and not so much on the face. I will try your method, ans see how it goes!

billypip Loc: nottingham England

as the subject seems to be moving towards you, you could try assigning the focus to a back button ( mine is the AE lock on my canon) and then shoot in AIservo, dont know what Nikon call it. You can keep the back button focus pressed in while firing the shutter and the focus will take into account the subject moving towards you, you should get more keepers. hope this is clear.