Getting sharper focus on the face?

[SquarePeg]

f/4.5, 1/500, ISO 5000

Couldn’t figure out why the face looked soft on this shot and the others I took today. I know I had the focus point squarely on the near eye. The Fuji 18-55 is usually very sharp even at full zoom. Went through all my settings when I got home. The AF was set to All instead of single point in one of the menu settings. The shirt seems much sharper to me than the rest. Not sure how that setting got changed but hopefully that was the problem? Still learning the Xt2 settings. It has face and eye detection that I’ve currently got turned off. Thoughts on using that technology for portraits? I’ve always thought of that as a feature for candids or group shots. Any other thoughts on why this looks soft? I think it’s also a bit underexposed?

 

[jaomul]

I would say from your settings that if you dropped the shutter speed to 1/500 the iso would drop to 500 also. Though cameras are capable at elevated iso, 5000 is high for any camera, robbing details and sharpness, maybe

 

[SquarePeg]

oops shutter speed was 1/5oo. That was a typo. Sorry! I had it on Auto ISO. It was very late in the day starting to get dark so available light was not great.

 

[Destin]

Definitely just softening from the high iso setting and any subsequent noise reduction processing (either in camera or in post)

I would agree that a shutter speed of 1/500 or so would have made more sense here.. no need to be up at 1/5000 for a portrait unless it’s very bright and you want to shoot wide open.

Edit: just saw your shutter speed correction. I maintain that high iso is causing the softness. But the solution would be to consider adding flash somehow at this point to get lower iso levels.

 

[SquarePeg]

Re the high ISO, not great I know but compared to the shirt I feel like the face is a lot softer.

 

[SquarePeg]

@jaomul @Destin

See my update re shutter speed. Thanks for your responses. Sorry for the confusion

 

[jaomul]

Did you focus/recompose? Possibly you focussed on short rather than on face, or if you recomposed maybe focus initially on a different plane than the face. Also if it's quite dark it's possible to misfocus slightly

 

[jcdeboever]

View attachment 148906
f/4.5, 1/5000, ISO 5000

Couldn’t figure out why the face looked soft on this shot and the others I took today. I know I had the focus point squarely on the near eye. The Fuji 18-55 is usually very sharp even at full zoom. Went through all my settings when I got home. The AF was set to All instead of single point in one of the menu settings. The shirt seems much sharper to me than the rest. Not sure how that setting got changed but hopefully that was the problem? Still learning the Xt2 settings. It has face and eye detection that I’ve currently got turned off. Thoughts on using that technology for portraits? I’ve always thought of that as a feature for candids or group shots. Any other thoughts on why this looks soft? I think it’s also a bit underexposed?

More than likely, it was because of the all setting. Double check noise reduction setting too. I always use the face / eye detection for portraits unless I'm going for a creative DOF look to it, then I manual focus and select my focus point. The face / eye detection works extremely well and keeper rate is fantastic. You will be impressed with it. It always seems to get it right, even with multiple people. I use it 99% of the time. I found the "all" rather useless with how I shoot and just adds a potential failure to the mix, as you have discovered, just like I did.

 

[zombiesniper]

Agree that the shirt does appear to be where the focus is.

With a 55mm lens you should have no need to go above 1/80 unless you have a medical condition or it's really windy. 1/500 is a really quick shutter for a portrait.

 

[SquarePeg]

Did you focus/recompose? Possibly you focussed on short rather than on face, or if you recomposed maybe focus initially on a different plane than the face. Also if it's quite dark it's possible to misfocus slightly

I didn’t focus/recompose -at least not intentionally lol. I never got the hang of that technique. I always move my focus point in camera. I may have shifted back unintentionally.

View attachment 148906
f/4.5, 1/5000, ISO 5000

Couldn’t figure out why the face looked soft on this shot and the others I took today. I know I had the focus point squarely on the near eye. The Fuji 18-55 is usually very sharp even at full zoom. Went through all my settings when I got home. The AF was set to All instead of single point in one of the menu settings. The shirt seems much sharper to me than the rest. Not sure how that setting got changed but hopefully that was the problem? Still learning the Xt2 settings. It has face and eye detection that I’ve currently got turned off. Thoughts on using that technology for portraits? I’ve always thought of that as a feature for candids or group shots. Any other thoughts on why this looks soft? I think it’s also a bit underexposed?

More than likely, it was because of the all setting. Double check noise reduction setting too. I always use the face / eye detection for portraits unless I'm going for a creative DOF look to it, then I manual focus and select my focus point. The face / eye detection works extremely well and keeper rate is fantastic. You will be impressed with it. It always seems to get it right, even with multiple people. I use it 99% of the time.

Good to know. Going to turn those face/eye detection features on and see how it goes. I changed my shooting settings to sharp +1 and noise reduction I left at 0.

Agree that the shirt does appear to be where the focus is.

With a 55mm lens you should have no need to go above 1/80 unless you have a medical condition or it's really windy. 1/500 is a really quick shutter for a portrait.

No medical condition but I’m not the steadiest either. I rarely shoot below 1/500 or 1/250 unless I can lean on something. I need to practice my hand holding technique and stance. I had a decent technique with the Nikon but the Xt2 is so much smaller and lighter that it’s almost harder to hold steady.

 

[jaomul]

I would say unless your subject is moving try go for 1/250 instead of 1/500 for portraits unless you have a long lens. Obviously if 1/250 isn't getting you the results you need you'd need to up the speed

 

[smoke665]

Sure you hear this a lot but she is a beautiful young lady. Maybe a combination of missed focus and DOF. On my tablet the NFL tag and some of the sleeve appears really sharp. At somewhere around 6' away from her you would have only had 3" give or take in front of the label still in focus so the eyes were likely close to the transition.

I prefer Manuel focus using the screen at 10x to determine my focus point. When I do use AF I rarely use anything but single point. My Pentax has face recognition that when combined with continuous focus will do a decent job of tracking a moving subject.

I'm not up on Fuji but I suspect there is a difference in technology used for focus on screen vs viewfinder. Again using my camera as an example it uses contrast difference to AF on screen view and Phase Detection on viewfinder. The Phase Detection is much more accurate, especially in low light.

 

[Gary A.]

Use single point and the toggle to move the AF point. It is quick, accurate and painless. For a portrait and you gots the time, use the face/eye detection it is amazingly useful and it works amazingly well.

 

[Overread]

ISO 5000 on most modern cameras shouldn't be a struggle to get a clear shot from. Yes it won't be as sharp as at a lower ISO but its perfectly useable and at the size show on on a forum shouldn't even be that evident.

1/500sec more than fast enough for a candid shot like this

f4.5 - not a huge depth of field but should be more than enough for a face


Your error is here
"The AF was set to All instead of single point in one of the menu settings"

When set to all the focus of the camera looks for the nearest point in which it can detect a contrast change. So even if the main point was aimed on the eyes the rest of the sensors are also in play and thus picked up the hair and focused on that instead. If you want to define an AF point to work with you really have to tell the camera exactly which one to use - sometimes cropping wide on the shot so that the middle (oft the one easier to use) AF point is on the point you want in focus and then you can crop to more easily compose the shot in editing.

Note remember that AF focuses the plane of focus on an area of contrast change, so if you recompose the shot the AF will either remain where it was (and thus you'll move the focus off the subject) or the AF will re-engage and refocus on the new area its pointed at.


Face and eye detection might well have kicked in and picked up the face and over-rode the AF default and some face/eye is getting scary good at picking out faces. For casual shooting that might be better to use if you don't want to use single AF point selection.

 

[smoke665]

Note remember that AF focuses the plane of focus on an area of contrast change,

Not necessarily true. I couldn't find confirmation on the method used in live view, but I suspect it uses contrast detection. Contrast Detection measures the edge contrast within a sensor field through the lens. The intensity difference between adjacent pixels on the sensor increases with correct focus.

However on the view finder on the Xt2 it's a different story for sure "When set to the default 91-point mode there are 49 phase-detect AF points in the centre of the array. This is a significant improvement from the nine phase-detect AF points that featured in the X-T1" https://www.fixationuk.com/close-up-fuji-x-t2-af-system/

Phase detection has been around on some other models for awhile now, the major advantage being it's ability to AF in low light better than the Contrast Detection method. For a more detailed explanation of how Phase Detection works How Phase Detection Autofocus Works