Question about focusing a 4-months old

iamdogdog wrote in post #7346688
another question, would getting a speedlight (430ex or 580ex) or ST-E2 helped me with a more accurate focus in this situation? Or those will only helps me in low light condition?

thanks.

Only in low light.

You need to practice your AF skills more. Once you realise what you are doing wrong it's easier to get right. You will not get every shot right but choosing the best aperture, shutter speed & ISO for any given situation will help a lot!

Shooting at f1.8 from 7' with a baby that is moving back and fro is unlikely to be the best settings..... Try f8 and use a flash not for focus but to add light to the scene to allow you to get f8.

I agree that focus and recompose is error prone when shooting children, so I generally use outer focus points to minimize focus errors and the time between achieving focus and releasing the shutter. What bugs me is that my camera (Rebel XT - 350D) and I assume most others have the focus points arranged in a "plus sign" which doesn't work that well for "rule of thirds" compositions. Why aren't the outer focus points arranged in an X along the diagonals of the frame?

Hi all,

Here are some more photos. This time I tried using the center AF point and NOT re-compose. However, because I lend my 1.8 lens to my friend, I was shooting it with my kit lens between F5.6 to F8. Therefore, I can't really test out if the out focus earlier is due to the lens or big aperture or something else.

All comments are welcome.

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Better although the side/back light is making some funny shadows. No1 is great.

Remember to use an appropriate focus point and to focus on the eyes.

What a cute smile in #1.

Do a member post search in this forum for Cheetapita and take some lighting / prop cues from her as these don't look as natural as they could.

EOS_JD wrote in post #7397374
Better although the side/back light is making some funny shadows.

Sometimes that can be highly desirable -- and is one reason why flashes aren't always ideal. The facial shadows show depth and accent features.

You must have had pretty good light to get these shots at those apertures. I'd say all three are pretty awesome.

I second the idea of shooting raw (to eliminate IQ degradation due to multiple lossy encode/decode passes with loose framing so you can crop after the fact.