Portrait of 2 girls

[Ferrari_Alex]

Hello all,
I have a question, a simple one. What is your focus point when you are trying to photograph two people or several people?
Normally when you photograph one person, you would focus in the eyes, but what to do in this case?
I was focusing on the smaller girl and naturally, she is sharper...
I also realized, that because of this "Always focus in the eyes" rule, I cannot create a correct composition. For example, I was focusing in the eye of the smaller girl and as a result, I had to cut the head of the taller girl. What is the correct approach?
Please advise!

[LeuceDeuce]

You don't have to use the center focus point. Use the one lower right and you'll get them both in frame. When shooting more than one person you'll have to stop down your aperature a bit as well in order to ensure they are both/all in focus. I don't think that focus is that big of an issue in this shot. Composition and exposure are your issues in this shot.

After you've framed your subjects, lower your exposure and use a fill flash to bring up the shadow areas.

[Mike Bell]

Good advice there. The DOF can be awfully thin if you open the lens up too wide. This kind of shot needs a middling aperture, say 5.6 or 8. The background is far enough away that it would still be nicely OOF.

[Ferrari_Alex]

Thank you for suggestions. Can you tell more about it?


After you've framed your subjects, lower your exposure and use a fill flash to bring up the shadow areas.

[Ferrari_Alex]

Exposure 1/1000 at f/5. Would f/5.6 make a difference here?

Good advice there. The DOF can be awfully thin if you open the lens up too wide. This kind of shot needs a middling aperture, say 5.6 or 8. The background is far enough away that it would still be nicely OOF.

[Mike Bell]

If you took this with your lens at 50mm and were about 6 feet (2 metres) from the girls (both guesses) ..... then my DOF guide says

f5 ...... about 7 inches (17cm)
f5.6 ....about 9 inches (22cm)
f8 .......about 13 inches (33cm)
f11 ......about 18 inches (45cm)

So maybe f8 or f11 is closer to what you needed.

[tdodd]

As far as focusing is concerned, make sure you separate focusing operation from the shutter release button, and only use the AF-On button to achieve focus. The procedure would then be....

(0. Ensure you have your exposure and flash set up as you wish;)

1. Choose the focus point you want to use and aim it at your intended focus target;
2. Press AF-On to achieve focus lock;
3. Release the AF-On button so the camera stops trying to AF any more;
4. Recompose the image to give you the framing you want;
5. Squeeze the shutter release button.

Your focus would then be on the eyes of the girl, as you intended, and the composition would also be correct.

To my eyes it looks like there is barely any difference in distance between the eyes of the two girls and your camera. In other words, accurately focusing on one girl should certainly get the other one in focus too.

For this shot you could surely have got away with using the centre AF point and then recomposed as required. For even more accurate focus you should have used the focus point that was most closely positioned over your intended focus target when you had the shot framed as you would wish. This would minimise the compositional adjustment after you set focus and thus minimise any softening of focus due to your own movement. With the amount of DOF you had to play with the tiny focus shift from recomposing would be of no consequence in any case.

Even when shooting a few people, so long as they are all in a straight line at a similar distance from the camera then you will not face much of a challenge with focus - if one is in focus they will all be in focus. If you have people in rows 2-3 deep or more that is when you really need to think about DOF issues.

[Ferrari_Alex]

Hello Tim,

Haven't seen you for quite a long time:-)
Let me ask couple of questions.
What do you mean by 2. and 3.? When I press it, it beeps, but doesn't lock..when I press it another time it beeps again, and when I press it another time it beeps again. Not sure how it works.

What is the difference between using the AF-On button or a shutter release half way to focus?

When I recompose the image, I need to focus once again, because everything changes....I move my hand, etc


As far as focusing is concerned, make sure you separate focusing operation from the shutter release button, and only use the AF-On button to achieve focus. The procedure would then be....

(0. Ensure you have your exposure and flash set up as you wish;)

1. Choose the focus point you want to use and aim it at your intended focus target;
2. Press AF-On to achieve focus lock;
3. Release the AF-On button so the camera stops trying to AF any more;
4. Recompose the image to give you the framing you want;
5. Squeeze the shutter release button.

Your focus would then be on the eyes of the girl, as you intended, and the composition would also be correct.

[tdodd]

Regarding the comment about lowering your exposure and using the flash....

You will note the hot (bright) lighting on the girls' left cheeks and the fairly strong shadows on their right cheeks and in the eye sockets. Their own features are casting shadows on themselves. The problem is that there is too much contrast between the bright parts and the shadows, and the shadows are hard edged. This does not look very flattering. Also, the white of the blouse looks pretty blown altogether - see my attached screen print - so a bit of a reduction in exposure would be no bad thing.

If you reduced the exposure by perhaps 1 stop (underexpose) that would effectively reduce the strength of the light coming in from their left sides. By adding flash from the front you are then replacing some of that lost light but in equal measure in both the hot spots and the shadows. This front lighting will have more effect in the shadows than the highlights and thus give the appearance of lifting the shadows. The cheeks will end up roughly where they started, but the shadows should look brighter. You will probably have to play around with FEC (flash exposure compensation) and possibly EC to get the right balance between sunlight and flash. You also need to consider the effect all this will have on your background exposure too.

Other ways to tackle the problem would be to use a diffuser to soften the sunlight falling onto their faces and/or a reflector to bounce light back and fill in the shadows. Your approach really depends on what accessories you have available and whether you have an assistant to help you. If you're on your own then the fill flash technique will be the simplest approach. Alternatively, get them out of direct sunlight and into open shade, or wait till later in the day when the sun is calmer and softer through more atmospheric diffusion. You could also simply turn their backs to the sun, so that they were backlit with a nice glow round the edges of their hair, and then used fill flash to illuminate their faces. There are clearly a number of options but this isn't a field I have much experience with so I'm not sure what would work best. It seems a great opportunity to experiment and learn. If the girls don't mind helping you out, maybe one could be your assistant while you photograph the other and then you can swap them over. Once you have found the technique that works best you'll just have to figure out how to apply it when you want to shoot them both together.

EDIT : You have a bit of a hurdle with using fill flash, unless you have a flash gun with high speed sync. At the moment you are at f/5, 1/1000 and 200 ISO. Your builtin flash has a synch speed of 1/250, which is 2 stops brighter than 1/1000. You could half the ISO to 100 and stop down the aperture to f/7.1 to compensate for the slower shutter speed but that would only keep your exposure where it was to begin with. To drop a stop from your exposure to allow room for the flash to operate would require an aperture of f/10. The problem with this is that your builtin flash, which has a Guide Number of 13, would not have the power to reach the girls with much strength - a tiny flash is not much competition for direct sunlight. Mind you, it might be just enough to brighten the shadows sufficiently. Your DOF would expand with the f/10 setting but it would still be less than 1m in total so your background would still remain soft.

[tdodd]

Hello Tim,

Haven't seen you for quite a long time:-)
Let me ask couple of questions.
What do you mean by 2. and 3.? When I press it, it beeps, but doesn't lock..when I press it another time it beeps again, and when I press it another time it beeps again. Not sure how it works.

What is the difference between using the AF-On button or a shutter release half way to focus?

When I recompose the image, I need to focus once again, because everything changes....I move my hand, etc
When you recompose you are only moving your hand maybe a couple of centimetres up/down/left/right. You will not be intentionally moving the camera backwards or forwards. Thus for practical purposes you will not be changing the focus distance at all, simply by focusing and then recomposing. If the girls are 2m away when you focus they will still be 2m away when you move the camera a tiny bit left/right/up/down. Unless your DOF is only about 1-2cm, any tiny change in focus distance from recomposing will not make any difference to the focus of the shot.

You took this shot at 44mm. Assuming your distance from the camera to the girls was 2m then your DOF was 17cm in front of the focus point and 21cm behind. You really would have had no problem with losing focus simply by recomposing.

As for my comments about using the AF-On button to focus and not the shutter button, have a skim through this thread....

http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=46965&highlight=af-on

The first time I tried it on my 30D I didn't like it, but I tried again and I'm now a solid believer. Canon didn't put a dedicated AF-On button on the 40D just to up the feature count. It is a very worthwhile enhancement to camera operation, especially when shooting sports/action/wildlife/movement, but it does no harm for all types of shooting.

[richardyoung]

Good advice there. The DOF can be awfully thin if you open the lens up too wide. This kind of shot needs a middling aperture, say 5.6 or 8. The background is far enough away that it would still be nicely OOF.


Yea.. normally when I shot two girls or two people.. I just focus any where on them.. and shoot around f11.. and everything falls in place..

[Bamamike]

Just put the focus independant from the shutter button to the * button on the back of your cam (AE lock with your custom function). Now AF to the point you want, press the * button, recompose and click.

[JDM555]

Can't you AF on the younger girls eyes, then set it to MF and have them both in the picture and shoot? I guess that way would work.
John

[Flo]

Fabulous comments Tim.as always.

[Chris]

When you recompose you are only moving your hand maybe a couple of centimetres up/down/left/right. You will not be intentionally moving the camera backwards or forwards. Thus for practical purposes you will not be changing the focus distance at all, simply by focusing and then recomposing. If the girls are 2m away when you focus they will still be 2m away when you move the camera a tiny bit left/right/up/down. Unless your DOF is only about 1-2cm, any tiny change in focus distance from recomposing will not make any difference to the focus of the shot.

You took this shot at 44mm. Assuming your distance from the camera to the girls was 2m then your DOF was 17cm in front of the focus point and 21cm behind. You really would have had no problem with losing focus simply by recomposing.

As for my comments about using the AF-On button to focus and not the shutter button, have a skim through this thread....

http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=46965&highlight=af-on

The first time I tried it on my 30D I didn't like it, but I tried again and I'm now a solid believer. Canon didn't put a dedicated AF-On button on the 40D just to up the feature count. It is a very worthwhile enhancement to camera operation, especially when shooting sports/action/wildlife/movement, but it does no harm for all types of shooting.

Custom function 4 is your friend!! You will be pleasantly surprised with your images once you play around with this for a little while. It does take a little getting used to however.