Stupid question? Focus..lens or camera?

[tmjjk]

Fantastic!! Thanks so much.. great tips and I really believe a great deal of the problem is the focus recompose method. It makes a ton of sense.. I will be trying this out tomorrow.

 

[grafxman]

All the advice you're receiving here is excellent. There's just one thing I would like to add. Looking at the dragonfly in the grass here's what I see. The grass close to you and far from you is blurred which is to be expected because of depth of field. The grass on the right edge of the photo is sharp however the grass on the left edge is soft. If you use a fairly open aperture to achieve a nice focus on the item of interest and blur most everything else then you run a risk of also having one edge or even both edges blurred as well. For example, with the dragonfly if you were at an angle to the dragonfly, say the left side of the photo was closer than the right side by just a small amount then shooting with an open aperture can cause a photo like your dragonfly to be soft on the left side and sharp on the right side. Hope this helps a little.

 

[The_Traveler]

rent a Lensalign and test your combination

 

[RedRobin]

All the advice you're receiving here is excellent. There's just one thing I would like to add. Looking at the dragonfly in the grass here's what I see. The grass close to you and far from you is blurred which is to be expected because of depth of field. The grass on the right edge of the photo is sharp however the grass on the left edge is soft. If you use a fairly open aperture to achieve a nice focus on the item of interest and blur most everything else then you run a risk of also having one edge or even both edges blurred as well. For example, with the dragonfly if you were at an angle to the dragonfly, say the left side of the photo was closer than the right side by just a small amount then shooting with an open aperture can cause a photo like your dragonfly to be soft on the left side and sharp on the right side. Hope this helps a little.

^^^^ What he said!

I photograph a lot of Dragonflies and Damselflies and know this problem exactly!

I would use the Canon's speed to autofocus on the subject and then recompose and re-adjust/fine-tune your focus manually.

 

[RedRobin]

Here's an explanation

The Problem With The Focus-Recompose Method

....That explanation is helpful and the author recommends an iOS App: https://itunes.apple.com/app/depth-of-field-calculator/id356339910?mt=8

But isn't it better to gain experience by learning from shooting lots of photos how to balance settings to achieve the DoF (Depth of Focus field) you want instead of fiddling around on your iPhone/iPad as well. ISO is also a factor influencing shutter speed and consequently aperture and hence DoF.

Also, don't all Canon bodies have a DoF button so you can see what's going on very quickly?