Help with focus please

Briony

Briony

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Nicki.
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Been out this afternoon and sat in the static shooting hide for an hour and took photos of some pheasants.

Through the lens they look o.k. to me but when I get them home and put them up on the monitor they are all slightly soft.

What can I do or do I need my eyes testing?

Thanks.
 
Briony said:
Been out this afternoon and sat in the static shooting hide for an hour and took photos of some pheasants.

Through the lens they look o.k. to me but when I get them home and put them up on the monitor they are all slightly soft.

What can I do or do I need my eyes testing?

Thanks.
Click to expand...

Put the pics up Briony, that will help!
 
Not using tripod as there was a shelf inside the hide and that would have taken me too far away from the subject, was using a bean bag and the IS was on.

The light did not help as it is very dark inside the hide and took a few on auto to try and get the setting right.

Here is one,

064.jpg
 
Well, from what I can see it is in focus, but it seems to be the wing feathers you have focused on. Try to focus on the eyes of the subject if possible.
 
Another example I took this morning of a Daffodil,:shrug:

044.jpg


( I really must do the VAT tomorrow :lol:)
 
The daff is focussed on the flowers internals by the look of it, just very narrow depth of field. The phesant looks like the grass just in front is in focus and he is slightly fuzzy himself. At least to my eyes!
 
What apature you set on? Just looks like a very shallow DOF to me so only some parts of the subject are in focus ???
 
It looks to me that your focussing isn't reliable enough. The ground in front of the pheasant is in focus, and the petals to the rear of the daff are in focus.

What autofocus mode are you using? Your camera may be picking the "wrong" points.

f/5.6 will give you quite a narrow depth of field on such a long lens, so you need to be spot on.
 
daf :shrug: do you mean dof?

I normally shoot on TV mode is this where the problem is lying? I should be shooting on AV?
 
Yammer said:
It looks to me that your focussing isn't reliable enough. The ground in front of the pheasant is in focus, and the petals to the rear of the daff are in focus.

What autofocus mode are you using? Your camera may be picking the "wrong" points.

f/5.6 will give you quite a narrow depth of field on such a long lens, so you need to be spot on.
Click to expand...

Af auto select should that be manual selection then?
 
The daff shot is at 30mm at f/4.5. The depth of field here is about half a centimetre. In this case your aperture is too wide to get everything sharp.

Personally, I usually shoot in aperture priority (Av on Canon?) because I can control depth of field. But that's just a personal choice, and YMMV.
 
Briony said:
Af auto select should that be manual selection then?
Click to expand...

With such a big apature on a long lens the DOF is very shallow so you need to be very acurate as to where you focus on a subject.

I'm still very new to photography and had all these problems myself and to be really honest the best thing I ever did was buy a digital photography book and read, it helped me out soooooo much with issues like this. :D
 
Look like my bedside reading is sorted out tonight !

Subject tonight A.V
 
Briony said:
Af auto select should that be manual selection then?
Click to expand...

Lots of people shoot macro in manual because it's difficult for auto-focus.

Your camera should have an auto-focus mode selector, which chooses between multiple points, centre area or one spot. Spot mode might be better for the pheasant shot.
 
So one spot for a single target and multiple spot for moving targets i.e Birds in flight is that right and if my lens is fully out then the lowest aperature setting - right?:shrug:
 
I see you have a Canon, don't know about the 450D but the user manual that came with my 400D was very usefull.
 
Paul, you obviously don't know me you are talking to one idiot here:lol: that needs reassurance every step of the way, and learns the best way by asking questions as I hate reading :lol:
 
Briony said:
Paul, you obviously don't know me you are talking to one idiot here:lol: that needs reassurance every step of the way, and learns the best way by asking questions as I hate reading :lol:
Click to expand...

Then ask away :thumbs::thumbs: You will have to "read" the answers though ............. lol.
 
Briony said:
So one spot for a single target and multiple spot for moving targets i.e Birds in flight is that right and if my lens is fully out then the lowest aperature setting - right?:shrug:
Click to expand...
What I do with shots like that is use spot focus, and stop my lens down 1 stop from widest. I focus on the subject with the centre spot, then recompose, then shoot.

Stopping down by one stop will usually sharpen up the picture and increases the depth of field a bit too. The downside is that you might need to up the ISO to get a fast enough shutter. But in this case you were at 1/256s which should have been more than fast enough, and you could have maybe gone down to 1/160s.
 
Yammer said:
The daff shot is at 30mm at f/4.5. The depth of field here is about half a centimetre. In this case your aperture is too wide to get everything sharp.

Personally, I usually shoot in aperture priority (Av on Canon?) because I can control depth of field. But that's just a personal choice, and YMMV.
Click to expand...

I thought I had cracked apertures and DoF but this has confused me a little. I have started using my DoF calculator in the hope that eventually I won't need it and it will become second nature to me.

My calculator (iPhone app) shows that with 30mm @ f4.5 and focusing 1m away gives 0.2m in focus which increases as you focus further away i.e 2m, 3m etc

Am I missing something?

Cheers
 
dan_yorkshire said:
My calculator (iPhone app) shows that with 30mm @ f4.5 and focusing 1m away gives 0.2m in focus which increases as you focus further away i.e 2m, 3m etc

Am I missing something?
Click to expand...
No, your figures are right. Going off those figures, you should have about 9cm in front and 11 behind the plane of focus.

I was going off the camera's exif data, which says 25cm distance, giving you a front depth of half a centimetre (about 1cm total).
 
Yammer said:
No, your figures are right. Going off those figures, you should have about 9cm in front and 11 behind the plane of focus.

I was going off the camera's exif data, which says 25cm distance, giving you a front depth of half a centimetre (about 1cm total).
Click to expand...

That's good, cheers for clearing that up. The calculator app I use has a minimum focal length of 1m so explains how I couldn't get shallower DoF *figures

Cheers
 
DoF shrinks dramatically when you get close to things. Macro photographers will often use high f-numbers to get decent DoF.
 
How are you focussing?

Do you have the focus set to single or continuous?

Are you setting focus with a half depressed shutter push or using the AF lock button?
 
I have the focussing set to single focus using the half press button:shrug: that is on the static shots on the BIF I have it set on continous focus, I hope that is right, had a play this afternoon on AV mode with a high F stop and the results can be found in my thread Kites playing ( I have done no PP at all)
 
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