is my 40D focusing correctly?

[kylejackson]

deleted

[fly my pretties]

Well, the 28-135 isn't exactly a portrait lens, so I wouldn't expect to get pin sharp shots from the distance you're taking then from. 2 and 3 lookm fine to me, though.

[kylejackson]

true. and at 28mm its not great, but, it was easier for self portraits. the lens just seemed off at other times so i decided to test it out.

[kylejackson]

bumppp. wth.

[Jono_XS]

Did you have IS turned off? I'm sure I've read that you should turn it off when tripod mounted. When reviewing images on the camera display what does your camera show when you ask it to show the focus points?

Were you using single point center focus or all 9 points in which case it chose one of the outside points?

[kylejackson]

IS was turned off, i didn't check the focus points but i was using all 9.

[USER876]

I think it's my monitor but the pics seem to all have a red color cast.

[LeuceDeuce]

The focus is fine, you're just not focusing on the eyes. Your plane of focus is at your ears. I've circled the areas of the photo that are sharp, and they clearly show you're focusing too far back. f/3.5 is going to leave you a narrow DoF so you need to be bang on.
_

[kylejackson]

I think it's my monitor but the pics seem to all have a red color cast.


i was messing with a warming gel and white balance, i didn't color correct them because i'm not using them for anything.

[kylejackson]

The focus is fine, you're just not focusing on the eyes. Your plane of focus is at your ears. I've circled the areas of the photo that are sharp, and they clearly show you're focusing too far back. f/3.5 is going to leave you a narrow DoF so you need to be bang on.
_


thank you. i probably should have used the center af point.

[Bill Boehme]

i was messing around today with self portraits, and it just seems like these pictures are way soft and a little oof.

IS was turned off, i didn't check the focus points but i was using all 9.

I agree with Chris (Leuce Deuce) about the focus. When you select all focus points, you never know for sure what the camera will choose, but it is almost certain that it will not be what you want. The camera's focusing system will try to select the highest contrast edge within its field of regard to focus the lens which in some of your images was probably the contrast between the background and perhaps your cap or ears. In the image that I edited below, it appears that the focus system used the contrast between your cap and the background although the DOF seemed adequate to give reasonable focus to most of your face.

Even though you did not ask about the color, I believe that the "off" color is primarily the result of a color profile assignment error and did not have a great deal to do with any gel filters. The image metadata shows that the image was processed using AdobeRGB as the color profile ... which is fine, however, when the image was saved, it appears that you did not convert it to sRGB first. In many cases that would not be a problem, except if saving images for the web where the EXIF color space is unasssigned. In my edit below, I reverse engineered the color profile to get it back to normal. I also ran the corrected JPG image through Adobe Camera RAW to tweak the white balance a bit further and then performed some tone curve adjustments and very minor sharpening. My conclusion: Your camera and lens are working just fine so no need to worry about the hardware.

341470

[kylejackson]

do you mind me asking what sharpening method you used? it looks really good, especially the eyes. but yeah, i forgot to save for web, i just exported with lightroom 2.

[Bill Boehme]

do you mind me asking what sharpening method you used? it looks really good, especially the eyes. but yeah, i forgot to save for web, i just exported with lightroom 2.

I do not know if Lightroom allows opening images in Photoshop as "Smart Objects" the way that Adobe Camera RAW does, but if so, the image is best processed as multiple layers in order to apply different processing to various parts of the image. The baseline sharpening that I applied to the entire image was an Amount of about 35, Radius of 0.7, Detail of 30, and Masking of 20. One of the layers was created strictly for enhancing the eyes -- in that layer, I increased the sharpening to about 50 for Amount, 0.7 for Radius, 40 for Detail, and 25 for Masking. Under the Basic tab, I increased Exposure by about 1/3 stop, along with slightly increasing Brightness, Contrast, and Clarity. I also applied a Strong Contrast point tone curve. I painted in the "eyes layer" with an opacity of about 50%.

After completing all of the editing with layers and masks, I flattened the image and then applied Photoshop's Shadow/Highlights adjustment to "brighten" the image a bit. Although not really necessary, I also used NeatImage to reduce noise slightly while only applying a very small amount of sharpening.

I also did a very small amount of output sharpening only to selected color channels -- in this case, USM sharpening was applied to the blue channel (Amount = 40 and Radius = 1.2) and then the green channel (Amount = 60 and Radius = 0.3).

[USER876]

I do not know if Lightroom allows opening images in Photoshop as "Smart Objects" the way that Adobe Camera RAW does, but if so, the image is best processed as multiple layers in order to apply different processing to various parts of the image. The baseline sharpening that I applied to the entire image was an Amount of about 35, Radius of 0.7, Detail of 30, and Masking of 20. One of the layers was created strictly for enhancing the eyes -- in that layer, I increased the sharpening to about 50 for Amount, 0.7 for Radius, 40 for Detail, and 25 for Masking. Under the Basic tab, I increased Exposure by about 1/3 stop, along with slightly increasing Brightness, Contrast, and Clarity. I also applied a Strong Contrast point tone curve. I painted in the "eyes layer" with an opacity of about 50%.

After completing all of the editing with layers and masks, I flattened the image and then applied Photoshop's Shadow/Highlights adjustment to "brighten" the image a bit. Although not really necessary, I also used NeatImage to reduce noise slightly while only applying a very small amount of sharpening.

I also did a very small amount of output sharpening only to selected color channels -- in this case, USM sharpening was applied to the blue channel (Amount = 40 and Radius = 1.2) and then the green channel (Amount = 60 and Radius = 0.3).

Impressive....great work!

[Walczak Photo]

i was messing around today with self portraits, and it just seems like these pictures are way soft and a little oof.

i shot in raw with my camera on a tripod, used a shutter release cable and a 28-135mm IS. vivitar 285 with CTO shot through umbrella at camera right, and custom WB. so i know its not motion blur.

for these i had my settings on standard:


http://img209.imageshack.us/my.php?image=mg0557ah5.jpg
f/3.5 1/125 ISO 200
http://img516.imageshack.us/my.php?image=mg0568ny6.jpg
f/5 1/125 ISO 100



and then i put the "sharpness" all the way up:


http://img7.imageshack.us/my.php?image=mg0597jj2.jpg
f/5 1/30 ISO 200

some highlights and everything but i wasn't taking this seriously.

is it just me or are these off? my tokina seems to be pretty sharp in all of my skateboarding pictures (http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=tokina&w=30440156%40N06) and my 50 1.8 is pretty sharp, so could it be the lens?

i appreciate any input.

While I really don't wish to sound rude here and hopefully everyone will forgive me for being so blunt, to me this really seems to be another case of "My pictures are soft, what's wrong with my camera/lens?". As has already been pointed out, the problem wasn't the camera or lens, it was simply a matter of using a shallow DOF and having the focus aimed at the wrong thing....user error, not the gear. There's a reason why most portrait photographers usually shoot around f/8...it's easier to get the whole face in focus. That said, there was also another issue here that I didn't see mentioned...

As you said these were "self portraits", it's worth noting that it can (obviously) be quite difficult to focus the camera when you're sitting in front of it...regardless of which focus points you use, particularly when using such a shallow DOF. My advice to you is that if your lighting situation limits your choice of f/stops (aka you -have- to shoot wide open), then shoot in manual and find something to pre-focus on. For example when I'm doing a self portrait, I will use a nearby bookcase, focus the camera on the edge of the bookcase, turn it back to where I'll be standing (or sitting) and then after I hit the shutter button (with the timer on) as I move myself in front of the camera, I can line myself...or rather my eyes up with the same plane of focus as the bookcase.

Also, please note that stuff like this does take practice. I don't know how many shots you actually took, but I'd expect to take at least 15-20 shots or more to get a really good one. Shooting another subject while you're behind the camera is one thing...trying to shoot yourself with no one actually operating the camera for you is another and sometimes it takes some work.

My advice would be to worry less about playing with "warming gels" until you have a better understanding of DOF, exposure (that second shot is -way- dark), etc.. Once you have a firm grasp of the basics, then is the time to start getting a little more creative with lighting and such. In other words, you have to be able to walk before you can run.

These are as always, just my opinions and should only be taken as such.
Good Luck,
Jim

[LeuceDeuce]

While I really don't wish to sound rude here and hopefully everyone will forgive me for being so blunt...

Jim, you should put this as your signature line :)