Trouble With Focus

[bumpylemon]

I'm having trouble getting full faced focused shots. They look focused when I take the pics. But when I go to edit or notice the OOF parts. I'm on my phone so I can't upload photos right now. My equipment is in my sig. I use auto focus mostly. What AF setting should I be using for closeups and portaits?

 

[Robin Usagani]

dont shoot wide open. Shoot wide open is fine but expect a lot of OOF on your shots.

 

[tirediron]

For this sort of work, single-servo AF, wait for the in-focus 'beep' and shoot. It sounds to me though, more like insufficient DoF. Use a Depth of Field calculator such as this one to ensure that your aperture is appropriate, based on the camera-to-subject distance and "depth" of the subject (ie the total depth that you want focused) to ensure sharp focus.

 

[o hey tyler]

Pix or it didn't happen.

 

[bumpylemon]

even on the photos where i shoot at 1.8 and everything in the backround is bokeh i still get blur. Im doing a friends pregnancy pictures today for practice. just want them to not be blurry. but thats why i take 1000 shots.

 

[bumpylemon]

for example that. ill post more. i usually post edit to sharpen eyes to make it look less OOF

 

[bumpylemon]

this one is fine

this one was ok

this is blurry

 

[Zrock]

The first one looked like the picture was all out of focus slightly. Looking at her eyes. The rest of them look great to me

 

[tirediron]

Looks to me like a combination of several factors: Missed focus, insufficient DoF and possible motion blur (#s 1 & 4 of the last set). To start, review the DoF calculator I linked to, ensure that your subject to camera distance is appropriate, select Single Servo ('S') AF, select single focus point, centre that point over the subject eye, and ensuring that your shutter speed is high enough (SS=1/FL), do some test shots.

 

[bumpylemon]

1 and 4 were shot manuel focus with the 50mm lens

 

[KmH]

..even on the photos where i shoot at 1.8 and everything in the backround is bokeh i still get blur.

What you are referring to is not bokeh, it is depth-of-field (DOF), shallow DOF, or a blurred background. They are not the same thing.

Don't forget that the plane of focus is always parallel to the image sensor.
If you have a subject partly turned, like the guy in the baseball cap, the plane of his eyes, and the facial mask in general, are no longer parallel to the image sensor.

To then have both eyes in focus would require stopping down the lens, or increasing the subject to image sensor distance, or using a longer focal length lens, or a combination of all 3.

 

[swedberg311]

use manual focus then use the display to zoom all the way into the eyes and manual focus I dont like auto focus unless its a quick child or a snapshot.

 

[Edsport]

even on the photos where i shoot at 1.8 and everything in the backround is bokeh i still get blur. Im doing a friends pregnancy pictures today for practice. just want them to not be blurry. but thats why i take 1000 shots.

Where you say you "even shoot at 1.8" you still get blur. I think you may be confused here. 1.8 will most likely give you blur except for a small portion of the subject and it's very easy to be out of focus at 1.8, any movement after you acheive focus will be blurred. Instead of 1.8 try higher f number like 5.6 or even 8 or so...