105th Anniversary Harley & focus troubles

105th Anniversary Harley & focus troubles

Took this shot of a friend's 105th anniversary edition Harley Davidson. I'll be shooting it next weekend in more detail. I seem to have a problem with my lens or camera (XT and 50mm f/1.4) focusing in front of where I'm aiming. I had the focal point on the words below the logo but it seems to have caught the top of the logo and bottom of the fuel door. I'm using a Canon UV filter on the lens. Would that have anything to do with my troubles? I seem to be having this problem somewhat consistently.

at 1.4 you're gonna get mad-crazy-insane amounts of bokeh; which could make you feel liek it's outta focus?

Hi

Firstly it seems to me that nothing is absolutley sharp anywhere in the image. At f1.4 you will a razor thin DoF depending on just how close you are to the subject. Even the slight muscle tone of your body will cause some rocking back & forth and I think the image also shows some camera shake.

How about trying with a tripod to ensure a rock steady platform and then see if you get the sharpness you are expecting.

Having said that some lens & bodies do have front and/or back focus problems but you can only prove that by taking pictures under controlled conditions.

HTH and best of luck

Edit: you say that you focused on the lettering just below the logo? Well if what you have shown is the full frame i.e. not cropped did you manually select the appropriate focus point or did you use the centre point and use the focus & recompose method. If the latter this also is a possible cause of the issue!

Actually, this image is not cropped at all. I was standing right behind the bike. This is how I composed it. I used the middle right or far right focal point (can't remember, is that in the EXIF?), which I set manually to that. I'm usually on center dot focus but changed it up for this one.

Good call on the tripod! I'm going to pull that out and get to the bottom of this.

With one shot, or AI Servo? At 1/200 I wouldn't expect that you need the tripod except to keep the focus where you want it to be, & it doesn't take much movement on your part for the f/1.4s focus to shift somewhere else.