focus question

by stopping down, especially in a church you lose your ability to capture the ambient light. i don't like to shoot at anymore than F8 in a church because then we are talking 15 second exposures to get ambient light. i can't hold my camera steady at 1/15 ad that to the movement of the group and there go my print sales. lol.. im still trying to figure out how you guys get great ambient light shots without tripods.. i'm not that steady!! do you even worry about this, or do you just step down and aim at the front?

As a poster with sharpness issues running at the same time as this one, I have to ask, as Beaconlightboy seems to have more or less done several times, assuming you are not using an the largest aperture which would risk DOF problemsb but rather running f5.6 -f8, would the difference between the same persons face and their waist after you recompose really make a noticeable difference?

I would have thought that at say 10 feet the actual difference(Hypotenuse) would be max 5 inches, and well within the DOF which should remain sharp.

I think it does make a difference, the whole point to this post was if anyone else noticed it with their cameras, and to see if i was doing things the way others do. i thought maybe i was doing something wrong. i have lots of questions and if that bothers you then dont read my posts. It seems to me, that i am in fact doing what everyone else does, just mine are a bit out of focus.

reflecting back, it seems that its quite possible that i need to pick better focus points for the camera manually instead of letting it just focus on the center af itself. Seeing as i don't have years of experience behind me, i like to know how others do things. trial and error is great for figuring things out, but i don't have a whole lot of free time to devote to it.

Less of the attitude buddy...

I am actually trying to get the same question answered that you are.

my bad pyrex i thought your quote below was referring to a sharpness question i asked in another post..lol here you are referring to yourself.

my apologies.. pictures aren't the only thing subject to interpretation..

You are correct in observing that the distance between your camera and the face and your camera and the waist is different. I'm not sure it would be even 5 inches. Shooting a 20D at 80mm, f5.6, at 15 feet gives a DOF of just over 2 feet, a foot in front, a foot in back. Shooting at f8.0 raises the total DOF to just over 3 feet.

As mentioned, focus on someone in the middle of the group, recompose, shoot. Alternately you can use one of the other AF points to minimize your recomposing.

I have been having a fit with focus issues myself but I'm shooting at f2.8 and DOF is razor thin.

BTW - we are talking about the area of 'acceptable' sharpness. What's really 'in focus'?

beaconlightboy wrote:
my bad pyrex i thought your quote below was referring to a sharpness question i asked in another post..lol here you are referring to yourself.



my apologies.. pictures aren't the only thing subject to interpretation..

Peace and love....

sooo, how many of you have the DOF memorized..lol anyone actually refer to it this in depth on a shoot?

http://www.visual-vacations.com …focus-recompose_sucks.htm
you might want to read this about focus I am no pro but this guy has a lot of people that have commented on his method.Regards

Littlefield wrote:
http://www.visual-vacations.com …focus-recompose_sucks.htm
you might want to read this about focus I am no pro but this guy has a lot of people that have commented on his method.Regards

Well having had a quick look at that site, I now realise it is more critical than I thought.... Oh lummy...

Quite interesting, if not just a bit grey cell testing... thanks for the link.