Having trouble with focus

keller · Jan 29, 2006

Ugh, just uploaded some of my flower pics, and the flower is all out of focus.

Does anyone know how to get focus right?

At the moment, I just set the aperture (for blurred backgrounds), point the camera's focusing centre at the object, then re-compose and shoot. Why isn't my camera getting things right? Is there any mistakes I might have made?

(I was using a digital compact)

Digital Matt · Jan 29, 2006

Without seeing the pictures, my guess is that you are trying to focus closer than your camera can focus. See if your camera has macro mode, which could be denoted by a small flower graphic. This will allow you to focus closer.

kfoster · Jan 29, 2006

When your shooting macro with very little depth of field you have to be careful that you dont move the camera when you press the shutter release. The slighest movement will make the shot blurry. You also need to be careful what your focusing on. Since you dont have any depth of field you need to make sure your focusing on the part of the flower that you DO want in focus because the rest of it and the background probably wont be.

What apeture are you shooting at? You dont necessily have to shot wide open to blur the background especially when shooting up close. Shooting at f/8 or f/5.6 should give you a blurred background but keep the whole flower in focus.

K

Rob · Jan 29, 2006

keller said:
Ugh, just uploaded some of my flower pics, and the flower is all out of focus.

Does anyone know how to get focus right?

At the moment, I just set the aperture (for blurred backgrounds), point the camera's focusing centre at the object, then re-compose and shoot. Why isn't my camera getting things right? Is there any mistakes I might have made?

(I was using a digital compact)

Using this method is probably locking the focus, when you then re-compose, it may be that there's enough movement to push the picture out of focus.

Rob

keller · Jan 30, 2006

I went back to check again, and it turns out you're right. I must've altered the camera slightly when I re-focused (I guess "slightly" turns into "a lot" in macro mode), and pressing the button also gave it a bit of a shake.

Rob · Jan 31, 2006

keller said:
I went back to check again, and it turns out you're right. I must've altered the camera slightly when I re-focused (I guess "slightly" turns into "a lot" in macro mode), and pressing the button also gave it a bit of a shake.

Yep. Less than a millimeter will stuff it up in most cases. I have a Nikon macro lens, the 135mm I seem to recall. I never use it because it's DAMN IMPOSSIBLE to focus in the real world. It's ok for a table top composition, and worked a dream on my F100, but on the manual cameras I now use it's a disaster area, you just can't use it for flowers - the wretched things move. I now have a pathological hatred of flowers.

Rob