Beginners Question

mosesgun

Hopefully someone could help me with this. I've recently got my first DSLR camera. It's a canon EOS700D. I've loads to learn but am enjoying the experience. I take a lot of pictures using the automatic settings and the various scene selections available. The problem I seem to have is that when I take a picture of say two people it seems to focus more on one than the other. In that one appears less sharp. My daughter does horse riding and when I take pictures of her it often seems that the horse is in focus and she's not. Generally the horse would be in the foreground. This happens if I have the scene selection set to automatic, sports, portrait etc. I know this is a simplistic problem and sorry if it's been asked a million times but any advice would be really welcome.

Alanstrainor

You'll just have to set the focus points on the camera when shooting, and be sure when you're looking through the lens what you are focused on. This has less to do with the modes you are using, and more with the focusing. You can also manually turn the focusing ring on the lens to force it to focus on what ever you like.

Paulw

This may help a little - http://www.photography.paul-walsh.net/info/equipment.html

Metric Tensor

On my autofocus settings I often switch it to "single point" when I'm trying to pick out kids amongst a melee of toys and other kids. I then set the centre focus point on their face, lock the focus and then compose the shot.

Have a look at single point focusing in your cameras settings. It might be helpful.

stronglikebull

As well as checking the focus points in the camera to make sure you're focusing on the correct subject, as others have said, you might also check the aperture. If you have multiple people in the photo, and want them all in focus, then you may find blurring of one if they are not in the same field of focus.

The depth of field of the camera will depend on the aperture setting. Wider aperture lets in more light, but reduces the field of focus. One person or object may be in focus, but someone standing directly behind may be blurred. In your case, with the horse and child, the horse is in focus but the child is not. If you focus on the child then the horse will be out of focus. If this is OK, then that's fine, but if you want both in focus then you need a narrower aperture.

A narrow aperture will give a greater depth of field, so all subjects are in focus, but narrow aperture means less light, and you'll have to either slow the shutter speed or increase ISO to get the picture right.

Use a semi-auto mode like aperture priority (AV on the Canon), select an aperture of maybe f8, and then take the photo with the camera choosing the other settings automatically. Set ISO to something like 800 if it's not automatic. Lowe the ISO in strong light conditions, make it larger in low light. You'll want the shutter speed to be something like 1/100 or faster, so chose an ISO that allows for this in your conditions. Try wider apertures as well as you may be able to get away with wider than f8, which will allow faster shutter times or lower ISO.

The sports mode on the Canon camera will attempt to use the fastest possible shutter time, which means you get wider aperture and higher ISO, and the wide aperture results in shallow depth of field. The portrait mode will also set a wide aperture as portraits would generally want a shallow depth of field anyway, which is why all your auto modes are giving you this focus blur in your photos.

mosesgun

stronglikebull wrote: »

As well as checking the focus points in the camera to make sure you're focusing on the correct subject, as others have said, you might also check the aperture. If you have multiple people in the photo, and want them all in focus, then you may find blurring of one if they are not in the same field of focus.

The depth of field of the camera will depend on the aperture setting. Wider aperture lets in more light, but reduces the field of focus. One person or object may be in focus, but someone standing directly behind may be blurred. In your case, with the horse and child, the horse is in focus but the child is not. If you focus on the child then the horse will be out of focus. If this is OK, then that's fine, but if you want both in focus then you need a narrower aperture.

A narrow aperture will give a greater depth of field, so all subjects are in focus, but narrow aperture means less light, and you'll have to either slow the shutter speed or increase ISO to get the picture right.

Use a semi-auto mode like aperture priority (AV on the Canon), select an aperture of maybe f8, and then take the photo with the camera choosing the other settings automatically. Set ISO to something like 800 if it's not automatic. Lowe the ISO in strong light conditions, make it larger in low light. You'll want the shutter speed to be something like 1/100 or faster, so chose an ISO that allows for this in your conditions. Try wider apertures as well as you may be able to get away with wider than f8, which will allow faster shutter times or lower ISO.

The sports mode on the Canon camera will attempt to use the fastest possible shutter time, which means you get wider aperture and higher ISO, and the wide aperture results in shallow depth of field. The portrait mode will also set a wide aperture as portraits would generally want a shallow depth of field anyway, which is why all your auto modes are giving you this focus blur in your photos.

Thanks very much for that. I genuinely appreciate the time you took to write this. It's great information for me and I've lots to go on now. I'll have to get her back on the horse tomorrow while I expirement!

Paulw

stronglikebull wrote: »

The depth of field of the camera will depend on the aperture setting. Wider aperture lets in more light, but reduces the field of focus. One person or object may be in focus, but someone standing directly behind may be blurred. In your case, with the horse and child, the horse is in focus but the child is not. If you focus on the child then the horse will be out of focus. If this is OK, then that's fine, but if you want both in focus then you need a narrower aperture.

Use a semi-auto mode like aperture priority (AV on the Canon), select an aperture of maybe f8, and then take the photo with the camera choosing the other settings automatically.

You will never get a decent shutter speed with f/8, even in current daylight, even using a top end camera with high ISO.

You really want a good shutter speed for a moving horse, so 1/400 or better. I'd be more inclined to try for 1/1000 and for that you will probably need ISO 1600 or higher. I've shot f/4, 1/800 and ISO 2000 on an indoor shoot. Lights in indoor arenas are poor.

Try f/5.6 to f/4, depending on your lense. I wouldn't go much more open than that, but I definitely wouldn't close it any more.

Most people don't care overly about having the horse fully in focus. The horse will never be blurred out though. Focus on the rider. Focus on the upper body, which should be a nice large target. The head should then be in focus too.

Here's a gallery or two of mine, which will give you a rough idea - http://www.photography.paul-walsh.net/sport/equine/index.html

Hopefully that helps.

CabanSail

These sort of problems will always arise when you let the camera do the thinking for you. If you spend some time to learn about exposure then it will allow you to take control of the camera and the photographs will improve. Many here recommend a book called Understanding Exposure, and it is very good. A more recent, and slightly better book IMHO, is Mastering Exposure. Reading these will help and you can ask questions here if you do not understand fully. Joining a local camera club can also help.

mosesgun

CabanSail wrote: »

These sort of problems will always arise when you let the camera do the thinking for you. If you spend some time to learn about exposure then it will allow you to take control of the camera and the photographs will improve. Many here recommend a book called Understanding Exposure, and it is very good. A more recent, and slightly better book IMHO, is Mastering Exposure. Reading these will help and you can ask questions here if you do not understand fully. Joining a local camera club can also help.

Thanks a lot. Can you tell me the author of the Mastering Exposure book? There seems to be a few of them with that title available for download.

Kenny Logins

mosesgun wrote: »

Thanks a lot. Can you tell me the author of the Mastering Eposure book? There seems to be a few of them with that title available for download.

Bryan Peterson.

This lad. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuC26Ri8wt4&list=PLC807CCF3F5186201

EDIT: Sorry, that was "Understanding"

This is the " Mastering" http://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Exposure-perfect-photos-camera/dp/1781579741 (I think..)

CabanSail

Kenny Logins wrote: »

This is the " Mastering" http://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Exposure-perfect-photos-camera/dp/1781579741 (I think..)

That is the one .... excellent book.