Sharpness Issues

[Cpalmer03]

yes they have...focus and recompose. this could be even the smallest amount of 'recomposing'.

everybody said to NOT do that.

no, they didn't. they said to do it correctly

What is the correct way?

 

[christop]

Recompose by changing camera position parallel to the plane of focus, not by changing camera angle. Or change the camera angle as little as possible (eg, if an AF point is close to the point of interest).

 

[paigew]

everybody said to NOT do that.

no, they didn't. they said to do it correctly

What is the correct way?

Well I already wrote it back on page two. As did amoliter. Be sure when you recompose you keep your camera on the same plane of focus. If you change the plane of focus (by moving your camera the wrong way) focus will be off. Recomposing takes practice but it is a valid technique practiced by professionals. It is a tool to be used in certain situations.

 

[joshua_]

everybody said to NOT do that.

no, they didn't. they said to do it correctly

What is the correct way?

Maybe reading a few books would help appease your question? It helps me.

I've read some different books so far and the best has been 'Understanding Exposure' by Bryan Peterson.

Another one that helped my learning a lot was 'Digital SLR Photography' by David Busch.

'Light, Science, and Magic' by Fil Hunter, Steven Biver, Paul Fuqua is good so far.

I read a couple of others that aren't worth mentioning.

I'll be onto Scott Kelby's 4 part box set next. I've seen it mentioned here and a good friend of mine who is accomplished as a photographer really recommends Scott Kelby's stuff.

Not sure if that is for you or not, but it has helped me and may give you a better feeling about what folks are recommending to you.

 

[o hey tyler]

Why Focus-Recompose Sucks

The Problem With The Focus-Recompose Method

Works fine for me... And thousands of other DSLR users.

 

[amolitor]

Why Focus-Recompose Sucks

The Problem With The Focus-Recompose Method

Works fine for me... And thousands of other DSLR users.

It's a bit like the olde skoole parallax issue for TLR users. Yeah, it's a real thing. It'll only bite you in a noticable way in some special cases.

The example cited in one of them is "suppose you're shooting someone from 4 feet away, and focusing on a point (eyes) that is 2 feet away from the point you're recomposing to (chest) and you're shooting wide open."

Let's see how special this is:

Let us assume we want the eyes, which you focused on, to be in frame, and that the chest is to be the center. This implies that the field of view at the plane of focus is at least 4' wide. So, you're shooting with a lens that is roughly the same length as your sensor is wide, or shorter -- 24mm on a crop sensor, 35mm on a full frame, and so on. Let us suppose 35mm on a full frame sensor. From 4 feet away. What now?

ETA: In the other one, the blogger has this nice picture of a guy in profile with shallow DoF, and helpfully gives is all the parameters. Based on that, we can calculate that, roughly:

- the camera about 12' from the subject (based on a guess of the actual field of view)
- the focusing error caused by focus-recompose from the eyes would be about 2"
- the actual depth of field is about 4" in both directions from the plane of focus

Now, to be sure, using an appropriate focus point made things more accurate, but the claim that it would have been crap had the photographer used focus-recompose with the center focus point is simply false. The plane of focus would have been different, the out of focus material nearer the camera would extend slightly further. The image would look subtly different, but the eyes would still be "acceptably sharp" and quite possibly sharp within the resolving limits of the sensor.