Question about focusing on more than one person

Hello POTNers!

I am having a tough time with focus when I shoot more than one face in an image. What should my aperture be? Will I have to forego bokeh to get sharp focus? Where should my focus point be? For example, shooting a brother and sister seated beside eachother. I think I may need to borrow a few of my daughters baby dolls and just practice,practice,prac​tice!! Do making these decisions during a shoot ever become natural-or is it a constant headache (like it is for me right now!). I know that is a lot of questions, thank you in advance for your wisdom!

If people are approximately the same distance from the lens then you should be ok with any aperture, try to stay at F2 or narrower. I shoot large groups with a wide lens at F5.6 or F8. You should be able to get some background blur still, just use a 100mm or so lens.

Have a play with the www.dofmaster.com online DOF system.

tim wrote in post #6002986
If people are approximately the same distance from the lens then you should be ok with any aperture, try to stay at F2 or narrower. I shoot large groups with a wide lens at F5.6 or F8. You should be able to get some background blur still, just use a 100mm or so lens.

Have a play with the www.dofmaster.com online DOF system.

Thank you so much!!

When I have more than one person, I like to take a few shots with different aperture settings, say 1.8, 2.8 & 5.6. That way I know I will get at least one shot with correct focus.

This means I can also blend the different apertures together in photoshop so that I can retain the background blur, but still keep the people in focus in the same shot which is a neat little trick.

This is up to you, but I tend to focus on either the nose or the eyes, depending on how narrow my DOF is and whether the subjects are in the same plane.

Get your DOF practice on the dolls, but then just practice on live subjects, there is no substitute for the real thing, and you never know you might just get a great shot by accident. Pictures of dolls wont really cut it in the family album.