HELP! Focus Issues

rp1600 · Oct 30, 2006

I shot about 150 images of my daughter yesterday and about 2/3 of them had focus problems. Notice in this picture how the center of her shirt has the word cowboy is in focus but her face is soft. On each of her pictures, her face was the center of focus, yet in most images, her face came up soft, yet everything in chest area was sharp.

I'm shooting with a canon digital rebel, 50mm 1.8 lens. This image, and all, were shot with manual focus.

Is it just me, goofing on the focus, or am i missing something the in the settings. This has happened periodically when manually focusing with different lenses, so maybe it is just me.

If any of you have advice please pass it on. I'll post the rest of hte pictures from yesterday's shoot a little later this evening.

JEazy · Oct 30, 2006

Close your aperature to at least f/8 to get all of her body in focus. The DOF in your photo is causing the words on her shirt to be in focus, but not her face.

Orgnoi1 · Oct 30, 2006

Yup what JEasy said... actually you had NO focus problems... the *problem* if you want to call it that is that at f/1.8 aperture the depth of field is minimal... especially at a short distance as you were shooting...

rp1600 · Oct 30, 2006

Hmmmm. Thanks. The picture (no pun intended) clears ...

... Make sense. But if i were focusing on her face, would it be sharp and the wording blurred.

Thanks all.

Sw1tchFX · Oct 30, 2006

This may sound stupid, but do you have the correct AF point selected?

Peanuts · Oct 30, 2006

Just as another note, even if you did focus on her face with a very wide aperture, it is very easy to focus on the rims of her glasses, so just take your time or even manual focus for a few

Happy shooting.

Orgnoi1 · Oct 30, 2006

rp1600 said:
Hmmmm. Thanks. The picture (no pun intended) clears ... ... Make sense. But if i were focusing on her face, would it be sharp and the wording blurred.

Thanks all.

Honestly even doing that method at f/1.8 could cause parts of her face to be in focus and parts not be... if you want to keep the full face in focus I would go to at least f/2.2 or f/2.8 and try there... that will deepen the DOF slightly while keeping you down in a range that if you want the shirt to be blurred it may be... experiment... its the only way!

rp1600 · Oct 30, 2006

This was taken in manual focus. Thanks for the feedback. It's definitely cleared some things up for me. Was worried my eyes were going bad.

The rest of the pictures are in the portrait forum for critique.

Thanks again.