Just had a few questions on different topics:
Single point focus
When you are shooting a subject(s) which you are not framing in the center of the shot with single point focus technique wise how exactly are you doing this? Are you:
Choosing a selective focus point on your camera that is closest to the subject (or if there are multiple subjects choose the point in the middle of the group of subjects)...focus then shoot?
or
Are you using center point focus on the subjects, lock the AF, recompose then shoot?
Locking the AF
I keep hearing people talk about locking the AF using the * instead of pressing the shutter halfway down. How exactly do I do this? I know this is a custom function but I'm just confused.
Also, when people mean "recompose" what exactly do they mean? Is this essentially reframing? I gather you would only want to move the subject left/right of the center and not recompose by zooming in/out since that would mess up the focus.
Low light photography
I shot at a bar last night in Brooklyn (they had a backyard garden with dim lights) where the management didn't want me to use flash since they thought it might annoy the other customers. Basically I was fooling around with my friend's 5D and 35L. The photos came out alright but the main problem was they were a tad soft mainly because I was shooting at f/1.4 and the shutter speed was a little slow (ranging from 1/5 to 1/60) even thought I cranked up the ISO to 1600. Here's a sample (I know I can't fix the shadows since I can't use the flash as a fill):
Now if I knew to crank up the ISO to 3200 (H) last night or if I kept track of the spots where I could shoot with a shutter speed of 1/40 or faster I know my photos would be a lot sharper.
Any other technique that might help me in this scenario? Is there any post processing I can do in GIMP that will fix them (I tried the sharpening tool in GIMP but I'm a total newbie at PP)?
Thank you so much for all your help in advance!
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