Center focus and recompose or moving the focusing points

[TonyUSA]

Hello,

For the portraits, when you focus to the eye. Which is best between Centre focus and recompose or moving the focusing points.

Thank you,

 

[photo1x1.com]

For your 5D III I´d say: move the focussing point and if that still does not fit your composition, recompose. For all (at least Canon) Bodies older than that, I´d recompose. But we just recently had a thread - it seems I am one of a few who would ever centre focus - recompose:
finding the right focus point

 

[Derrel]

Move the AF point and focus. The closer you are, the more important this is. We had a thread on this recently. At wide apertures, focus and recompose can cause OOF issues.

 

[TonyUSA]

Thank you,

 

[TCampbell]

The plane of focus is meant to be "flat" (technically it's always at least a tiny bit curved) .

The means that if you require critical focus, and you focus your subject in the center of the image, then recompose to move them toward one side, they've almost certainly fallen out of the point of critical focus.

I say "critical focus" rather than just "focus" because if you have a very broad depth of field, you probably won't notice much difference (if any). But if you have a shallow depth of field, it'll likely be a problem and using the focus point nearest to your subject (to minimum any need to focus & recompose) will get you better results (even if it is a little more time consuming to reselect the focus point.)