How many Focus Points do you use?? Experiences...

Hi guys

Just wondering how many focus points you all use for particular genres of photography.

As a noob I had my camera set to use all of the focus points, but when I got my 85mm 1.8 and the 50mm 1.4 I was told that you get much better results in portraits if you just use the centre focus point and focus on the eyes first and then re-compose the picture. Is this a common way of focussing?

Due to the crop factor on my camera I have mainly been using my 50mm for portraits and the majority of my shots, however I have not been getting the perfect sharpness that I see in so many photos on here with the same lens. What am I doing wrong?! I admit I do like to have my aperture set as close to 1.4 as possible since I am addicted to the bokeh! Is this sacrificing clarity and crisp sharpness?

I'm sure the lens itself is fine and it's something operator related! I know its not an L lens, but I have seen fantastic photos that others have taken with the 50mm 1.4 and I would like to achieve that level.

This is a photo I took last week with the 50mm 1.4, I have only touched up colours a bit, nothing else. It just doesn't look as sharp as I think it should. I want it to 'pop' out of the frame, please help me!

Thanks everyone
Anna

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Usually I use them all, except for Animals, I tend to use just the center for that.

For my general use I use multi-point AF but I set my program mode to
single point AF to better use the "focus and re-compose" you mention.

I always use center point focus. It helps when I'm shooting sports.

I keep mine on the center focus point unless I am taking a photo of a group of people. I have found that by leaving the camera on the center focus point allows me to compose my photos in camera better rather then have to rely on PS to compose them. I have gotten into the habit of locking in focus then recomposing the shot. This has been good because I now have many more usable photos coming straight from the camera without much if any PS needed.

I always use a single focus point, typically the centre one although I will move its location around if needed.

I do that too. Either that, or focus manually...

45 mostly.

But I do abuse the focus -recompose center point for eyeballs. Bad dog.

http://visual-vacations.com …focus-recompose_sucks.htm

Center focus then recompose. For people I focus on the eyes then recompose.

One or two when I don't want the subject to be in the center but a single center point is my default. As for your pic, the aperture (and resulting ultra shallow DOF) is the culprit. While portraits can be done wide open with the 50, you'll have to really nail the focus. Besides, the edge sharpness wide open on the 50 f1.4 leaves much to be desired. It improves greatly when stopped down to f2.8 and gets really good between f4 to f8. Try the same shot at some different apertures and I think you'll be pleasantly surprised by how sharp your portraits can be.

Thanks so much for your comments guys, feedback is great.
cosworth, that link explains a lot, thank you very much for that, i will experiment more with the other focus points.
rumjungle, i will also try more portraits with different apertures and hopefully get better sharpness!
You know how it is though, you get a lens that is capable of f1.4 and thats all you want to use!!
Anna

Oh, I totally agree with you there. I like taking pics wide open on the 85 just to admire the bokeh, but I find that the IQ of my subjects improves quite a bit if I stop it down to f2.8.

Okay, I feel so pathetic, but I can't limp along any longer missing the message in some of the posts. I'm sure if I perform a search I could find the answer I am looking for, but this way helps boost my posts totals !

What the heck is "bokeh"? I've seen it in several posts and for the life of me have not been able to pick out the meaning from the context clues. I'm sure I'm gonna feel even slower after the answer comes in! Oh well, at least I'll know what it means!

From Wikipedia:
"Bokeh (from the Japanese boke ぼけ, "blur"[1]) is a photographic term describing the subjective aesthetic qualities of out-of-focus areas in an image produced by a camera lens. For example, causing an out-of-focus background image may reduce distractions and emphasize the primary subject."
FULL ARTICLE

Interesting article, cosworth. I may have to rethink my extensive use of focus/recompose. I wonder if anyone here has a rebuttal.