aperture and distance

[MACollum]

Adjusting the aperture to manipulate the DOF, should affect things that are not the same distance away as what you focus on. For example, lets say you are shooting a child in a field, with trees in the background. If you shoot at F2.0, and focus on the child...the child should be in focus and the trees in the background should be blurry. If you change the aperture to F16, (the shutter will need to be much slower) but the child will still be in focus, just like the first shot. The difference will be how the trees in the background look. They will certainly be more in focus, and they may be completely in focus.

I think this was the answer I was looking for originally. Thanks.

Maybe the problem you are having, is getting the subject into focus in the first place. If so, that is a probably a different issue, and we can help with that if you post some examples.

I think that this is the problem, or else camera shake. Example:

Av mode, f2.5, 1/200, ISO 100. I probably should have taken the ISO up to 200 because she was in a little recess in the wall. But the camera picked the shutter speed since I picked the aperture. Does this look like camera shake or a focusing problem? I wouldn't think that it would be camera shake at 1/200 but I obviously don't know much :blushing:

 

[Big Mike]

You copied two of the links incorrectly, so I fixed that for you. Did you mean to post the same photo 3 times?

1/200 should be plenty fast enough to avoid most camera shake with a 50mm lens. So I don't think that is a problem. Actually, I don't think this is really out of focus in the first place...do you?

 

[MACollum]

I'm sorry, I was having trouble getting the link to show up. Her face seems a little blurry, it's just harder to tell when I resized it.

 

[Big Mike]

It is hard to tell on the resized version. Are you sure that you focused on her face, and not on something else?

It could even be possible that your camera/lens is misaligned. To test this, try a google search for focus test and do a simple test. Also, what is your editing process? A lot of shots will benefit from some sharpening.

 

[MACollum]

I hadn't sharpened this one yet, it was shot JPG straight out of the camera. I usually view pictures at 50% to check for sharpness. I always sharpen the pictures some. Usually they're sharper than this though. I focused on her face and she was sitting still.

I was shooting RAW but my computer is still messing up and I can't get DPP to quit crashing so I had to go back to shooting JPG at least until I get a new motherboard for my POS computer.