Out of focus

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Keith Butler

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Keith
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Hi,
I was trying to take a picture of a Dandelion seed head today and when I focused on it, it looked like an orb and would not show the seeds clearly, what could be the problem.
 
Too near, wind movement, poor light and slow shutter speed?
 
Could be that you are too close to it, the lens can't focus on it as it can't focus any more, no different from you trying to read a book just a few millimetres from your face and your eyes can't focus any closer?
 
Hi,
I wanted to get close up, I have attached the picture what do you think is the problem.

Laburn_015.JPG
 
I think the piccy is too small.
 
It would help to know what camera and lens and the EXIF too!


Heather
 
Hi,
The Camera is the starter Nikon D3100, I have two basic lenses and tried them both, the lenses are 18-55 3.5-5.6 and I think the min dist is about 60cm and the other is 70-300 4-5.6 with Macro and the min dist is 1.5m. I tried all sorts to get the Dandelion into focus, by the answers it sounds like I was to close, I did try to get back as far as I could, I have attached a picture if a flower I took and that went Ok. Any advice is welcome as I am a newbie.
London_Trip_034.JPG
 
Auto or manual focus? From the tiny shot you posted, it doesn't look like you we're too close depending which lens you were using, but if you we're on auto focus and didn't have the focus point on the dandelion, or the camera couldn't lock on because it was moving, that might explain it.
 
Hi,
I can not remember If I tried M/F on the Dandelion.

I have attached a picture of the falls is there anyway I could have improved this any advice is welcome.



Laburn_0091.JPG
 
David, I'm guessing that was a joke?! If not, did you read the thread? If it was, smileys are you're friend :)
 
Keith Butler said:
Hi,
I can not remember If I tried M/F on the Dandelion.

I have attached a picture of the falls is there anyway I could have improved this any advice is welcome.
Click to expand...

Manual focus is almost essential, certainly often easier, for a subject like that dandelion. Looks as if the camera has focused on the background.

The falls shot has exposed for the highlights, leaving the shadows and darker areas very underexposed. These are difficult shots to get right because you almost inevitably end up with areas either under or over exposed.

Try exposure bracketing to see if one gives you the results you want, and then if not possibly merge in PP to make an HDR image. Or (especially if you shot in raw), try adjusting the shadows in PP. Do you know what metering mode you used? Looks as if you might have used spot metering on the water in the middle.
 
Southdowns said:
David, I'm guessing that was a joke?! If not, did you read the thread? If it was, smileys are you're friend :)
Click to expand...

He's being factual rather than sarcastic:).

It's rare you'll hear me say 'it's the gear' but in this case, if the OP wants to shoot flowers close up, he'll need a lens that focusses closer, a cheap but lesser option is a 'close up filter' which is effectively a magnifying glass you screw on the end of your lens.

Of course the other option is to shoot at minimum focussing distance and then crop, it depends on the final viewing medium, a heavily cropped image will look fine posted on the net but he'll not be able to print it 20" wide.
 
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Keith Butler said:
Hi,
I can not remember If I tried M/F on the Dandelion.

I have attached a picture of the falls is there anyway I could have improved this any advice is welcome.



Laburn_0091.JPG
Click to expand...

What would you want to achieve:thinking:.

There's hundreds of improvements that could be made, but what is it that you want to improve?
 
Phil V said:
He's being factual rather than sarcastic:).
Click to expand...

Factual, but (if it wasn't a joke, which I think it was), overly literal and hence unhelpful :)
 
Hi,
Wow I am a little bit dissey and realize I have a lot to learn, I appreciate your comments and the advice.
 
There are really only 2 reasons for this being out of focus. A) It's too close, or B) if using AF, the active AF target was not on the flower.

I'd be careful about blithely recommending manual focus too, as most DSLRs, especially crop cameras have very poor focusing screens to visually assess focus. Using a zoomed in live view is probably the best way to focus manually on a DSLR.
 
Pookeyhead said:
There are really only 2 reasons for this being out of focus. A) It's too close, or B) if using AF, the active AF target was not on the flower.

I'd be careful about blithely recommending manual focus too, as most DSLRs, especially crop cameras have very poor focusing screens to visually assess focus. Using a zoomed in live view is probably the ONLY way to focus manually on a DSLR.
Click to expand...

Fixed that:thumbs:
 
Pookeyhead said:
There are really only 2 reasons for this being out of focus. A) It's too close, or B) if using AF, the active AF target was not on the flower.
Click to expand...

Or the dandelion head doesn't have enough contrast for the AF system, or the head is close and moving on the breeze, or the focus is set to "wide area".

Pookeyhead said:
I'd be careful about blithely recommending manual focus too, as most DSLRs, especially crop cameras have very poor focusing screens to visually assess focus. Using a zoomed in live view is probably the best way to focus manually on a DSLR.
Click to expand...

Unless you have a Sony, which of course the OP doesn't :)

I think though that recommending MF comes with an implied and therefore unwritten assumption that you're recommending "correctly done" MF :)
 
Hi,
The picture of the Water fall was taken with the sun in front of me and was taken with Auto, the pictures I took with the sun at my back were fine, can you tell me three things I could have done to brighten the picture with out making the water to bright. If you tell me 100 things this will only confuse me with me being a newbie.
 
Keith, re the waterfall, it may actually be impossible. The problem is that your camera's sensor simply can't cope with the huge difference between the light and the dark areas; it doesnt have enough dynamic range (no camera will be much better; none are anywhere near as good as your eyes).

The water looks pretty well exposed to me, so even the slightest increase in exposure, to make the dark bits lighter, WILL overexpose the water (make it brighter), at least a bit.

In auto, there are only three options I can see if you want a more balanced exposure:

1) take bracketed shots, meaning taking three or more shots, with one at the camera's chosen exposure, one or more below, and one or more above (your camera will have a setting to do this automatically), then choose the one that gives the best compromise.

2) do the same, but merge them together afterwards using software, to create a high dynamic range (HDR), photo.

3) adjust the exposure in just the dark areas in software afterwards. This works much much better if you've shot in raw format, and even then isn't a magic solution; you can only go so far without getting a lot of noise and other problems.

There are other things that can be done if your subject has a very wide dynamic range, such as using graduated filters, a black card technique, or exposing for specific parts of the scene, but some wouldn't work for your scene, and some require more practice and understanding of exposure than you can be expected to have as a beginner.

Regardless of all the above, I'd strongly suggest coming out of auto. All the time you use auto, the camera is making all of the decisions for you, so really you're not learning much because there are too many variables that you're not controlling and you're trying to second guess the decisions your camera's software is making. You need to start experimenting with the settings so you learn what effect they have.

You need to understand what affects exposure, how your camera deals with it, and how you can control it. These two tutorials are pretty good starting points.

http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=158332

http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=79229
 
Pookeyhead said:
Looking at the image, I'd say that's not the case.
Click to expand...

True if you mean the head vs the background, but if he was close enough for the head to completely cover the focus point, I'm not so sure, especially if it has even the slightest movement.

But of course if he's in full auto, he's probably got no control over how the focus point is selected anyway. I don't know for sure with his camera, but mine does its own thing - had to test it just now because I've never used auto!
 
Keith Butler said:
Hi,
The picture of the Water fall was taken with the sun in front of me and was taken with Auto, the pictures I took with the sun at my back were fine, can you tell me three things I could have done to brighten the picture with out making the water to bright. If you tell me 100 things this will only confuse me with me being a newbie.
Click to expand...

Well if that's your biggest issue with the image, then the first answer would have been to shoot bracketed exposures and merge them in post.

It's not my favoured response, because I don't like the 'fix it in post' attitude.

Second. With the light in a different direction you'd have got the shot.

I can't think of a third for that particular shots dynamic range. Although for balancing sky and land you could use a graduated ND filter.

Your problem is the dynamic range of the scene is greater than can be captured by a camera. There isn't enough light on the land to give detail whilst maintaining detail in the water.

Does that help?

There's probably someone who can rescue lots of detail from the dark areas and make it look convincing. But it's not really my thing.
 
I've just checked on my camera, and it won't allow either exposure compensation or bracketing in full auto mode, though it will on "P". Yours might, but if not the three pieces of advice you're after are:

1) come out of auto.

2) switch to a mode that's not auto.

And

3) turn auto off.

:)
 
Southdowns said:
I've just checked on my camera, and it won't allow either exposure compensation or bracketing in full auto mode, though it will on "P". Yours might, but if not the three pieces of advice you're after are:

1) come out of auto.

2) switch to a mode that's not auto.

And

3) turn auto off.

:)
Click to expand...

So what's full auto, and at what point is auto anything acceptable? Because I'd hate to think you were telling someone that switching to Manual and MF was in some way going to improve that image?

Because (guessing you're not stupid) you know that it'd not help a single bit ;).

Hadn't seen your excellent response from earlier when I wrote this.
 
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Hi,
I really appreciate everybody's help. I suppose the time of day would have helped or on an overcast day, we were out for the day out and I was possibly there at the wrong time of day.
 
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Phil V said:
So what's full auto, and at what point is auto anything acceptable? Because I'd hate to think you were telling someone that switching to Manual and MF was in some way going to improve that image?

Because (guessing you're not stupid) you know that it'd not help a single bit ;).

Hadn't seen your excellent response from earlier when I wrote this.
Click to expand...

No problem Phil. You're right, coming out of full auto won't help that image (well, it might allow him to meter slightly differently, or bracket, but won't solve he problem on its own), but it will help Keith learn about exposure and hence understand his options if faced with the same scene in future :)
 
Phil V said:
So what's full auto, and at what point is auto anything acceptable?
Click to expand...

I find auto anything (Aperture, Shutter or Program modes) to be acceptable for all I do. But I don't find full auto acceptable as the camera is doing absolutely everything and while it may do exactly what I would have done anyway there are many times where it wouldn't - choice of ISO, focus point, aperture/shutter ratio etc,.
 
ernesto said:
I find auto anything (Aperture, Shutter or Program modes) to be acceptable for all I do. But I don't find full auto acceptable as the camera is doing absolutely everything and while it may do exactly what I would have done anyway there are many times where it wouldn't - choice of ISO, focus point, aperture/shutter ratio etc,.
Click to expand...

Almost exactly how I shoot, about 80% AV, 15% M and 5% TV. Never use Auto ISO, never let the camera choose the focus point (although I'll use focus point expansion on moving subjects).

But those figures mean nothing to someone starting out who would have no idea why I decide AV or M? Nor does it give any clues to how I meter and what decisions are made about when to use exp lock or exp comp rather than M.

I get frustrated at the general 'acceptance' that M is the only way you're in control, particularly having been lectured by people for 'letting the camera make the decision' only to find they had no idea what they were metering for and in some cases used Auto ISO whilst shooting M (so had no exposure control whatsoever :bang:)
 
I agree Phil (to be clear I was advocating not relying on full auto, not the opposite extreme). There's a place for full manual of course, but I think the idea that manual is the only way to be a "proper" photographer is ridiculous, especially as many of the people who say that set an aperture, then use the camera's meter to choose the speed; no different to aperture priority in practice, either way you're relying on the camera.

The problem with full auto is that you're allowing the camera to set everything for you, with no element fixed, so trying to work out why you're not getting the results you want is almost impossible, especially if you don't yet understand what affect exposure, DoF, noise, camera shake, etc etc etc.

I recon I use aperture priority 90% of the time, and manual 10%, I'm not sure I've ever used shutter priority, though I should; if I want a specific speed, I tend to asjust the aperture in aperture priority mode, until the camera gives it to me. Sort of the same thing really; it's just I forget to change the mode dial!
 
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