DOF/focus issue, feeling like a fool

Boy did I screw up... I thought I could do post ceremony wedding party group shots, but I was wrong. Big time wrong.

I have a 40D w/ 580EX II and Sigma 24-70 f/2.8. Set up was a church w/ ample lighting, but not bright, similar to a large room lit up by a couple of 75w bulbs. Flash set for full auto (ETTL) 40D set for portrait auto, but none of my pics were in focus. Most of the shots were at 24mm from 101-5 feet away and all appear somewhat blurry. This I learned at the rehearsal.

So for the actual wedding shots I switched out lenses and used my kit 28-135 IS. I thought that with the Canon flash, body and lens I would be okay. The results were basically the same, and now I have to break the news. Thank goodness this was a favor and for free, but still somewhat devastating.

Lastly, note that the flash was pointed up w/ a Demb reflector leaning about about 75 to 80 degrees toward the subject.

Any advice is appreciated.

Can you post a sample ?

What shutter speeds were you getting? It's possible that they're not OoF but rather have motion blur from you or the subjects. As Damian posted, a sample would help to figure out what went wrong (make sure EXIF is retained).

Here's an example. Also note that I was using a tripod, but not a remote shutter release.

Thanx guys!

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EXIF Data

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I can see the EXIF data from your shot.
Sorry to hear about your problem, but that's why professionals charge as much as they do. You might be able to salvage your shots with some sharpening & curve adjustment.

Camera Make: Canon
Camera Model: Canon EOS 40D
Image Date: 2009:03:06 19:37:29
Flash Used: Yes (Manual)
Focal Length: 28.0mm
CCD Width: 5.86mm
Exposure Time: 0.017 s (1/60)
Aperture: f/4.0
ISO equiv: 400
White Balance: Auto
Metering Mode: Matrix
Exposure: Portrait Mode

You had more room in the ISO department to bump it up...the 40D can deal with 800 and higher, so remember to use it.

Multiple frames in group shots are also essential - gives you more chances to get all eyes open and facing the right direction. Can also help make sure you get something in focus.

Hard lesson learned. I know you did it for free, but from what I've seen friends often expect pro results even with disclaimers up front

Black and white or toned may be a good way to go if you can find a frame with at least the bride's eyes in focus...

Good luck!

Hi I was wondering with a group that large you may have had better results shooting at f/8 or f/11 rather than f/4 as your exif data indicates.
Alan

Since everyone is in a line, only one person deep, you don't need much DOF. Assuming a shooting distance of 15' the DOF at 28mm and f/4 would be 16' and would extend from ~10' away (5 ' in front of the subject) to ~27' (12' behind the subject). Even allowing for a focus error it is hard to pin down the problem to missed focus. I would have said that even f/2.8 would have been fine for this. Certainly f/4 is ample.

Even hand held, 1/60 should have been no problem, with care, so on a tripod I doubt the issue is camera shake, unless the shutter release was mashed down with wanton abandon. 28mm on a 40D implies shake free hand holding, with good technique, at a shutter speed of 1/(28 * 1.6) = 1/50. 1/60 on a tripod ought to be fine.

So, the DOF ought to mask minor focus errors and the shutter speed, given the tripod, ought to have been enough to prevent camera shake. Since everyone looks equally soft I doubt that subject movement is the problem.

Perhaps what we have here is a combination of a lens that is not super sharp wide open at 28mm and maybe a lack of sharpening when resizing. There is also the question of colour balance. I had a quick play with the photo in Lightroom and I think there is room to make some improvement, but it would be better to work from the original file.

Jim, I could post my edited example if you turn on "Image editing OK" in your profile. Unless you do that, or give specific permission in this thread, I am not allowed to edit and re-post your work. If you can make the original file available, without any edits, then maybe I could do a better job.

Its difficult to tell with web sized images but your background looks more in focus than the people do in the shot above so maybe you didnt focus on the people properly or the focus on your lens is off.

A whack of USM on the photos may help you get away with it for small sized prints.

tdodd wrote in post #7484962
Jim, I could post my edited example if you turn on "Image editing OK" in your profile. Unless you do that, or give specific permission in this thread, I am not allowed to edit and re-post your work. If you can make the original file available, without any edits, then maybe I could do a better job.

Tim, I've changed my profile to allow editing, but due to size limitations on the forum, I am unable to get the original file posted. Happy to share and have your expert input, but how do I get the file to you?

Mucho Thanxo

Here's the quick fix on the image you posted here in the thread earlier. PM sent with my email address so you can send me the original file.

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The problem is that you shot in one of the "Non-Creative" auto modes which "auto-magically" selects WHICH of the nine focus points to use, and 9/10 times, it's NOT where you wanted, so you really have almost NO control in Green/Auto/Portait/Nig​ht/Sports mode. You really have to go M or Av mode to get the control you need to pull off shots like this.

I would have gone M mode, ISO400, f/5.6, 1/60s (to keep the background somewhat lit), E-TTL +1/3 FEC, center AF point. Depending on how high the ceiling is, I might either raise or lower my ISO, and I might adjust my shutter speed depending on the background illumination.

You really can NOT use the auto modes for any critical work such as this.

Now that I've had a chance to see the full file, here are my thoughts...

Shooting in portrait mode has created some limitations....
- You were unable to shoot in raw and your JPEG from the camera now has certain settings "cooked" into it that you would probably wish you could change.
- WB is off and correction is not straightforward.
- Sharpness was only set to 2 in camera, which means the photo is a little softer than one might usually expect straight out of camera.
- Portrait mode creates a pinkish colour bias that I personally don't like.
- You had no control over the choice of focus point and the camera chose what it decided to focus on. Fortunately, in this example all points were lit up, so the camera had very solid focus established throughout the lineup.

Had you shot in one of the creative zones you would have had the luxury of picking your preferred focus point and also in shooting to raw. By shooting raw you could have then had the option to freely change the chosen picture style, white balance and amount of sharpening, after shooting, with no detriment to the final image quality. Any necessary adjustments to exposure/levels/curves would have been possible on the full 14 bit data rather than the compressed 8 bit data that JPEGs are limited to.

So that's hopefully a bit of useful food for thought for the future.

Now, back to the photo. With the benefit of the full sized original image to look at I'd say it actually is focused reasonably well and, as I stated earlier, your DOF is ample to cover the subject matter. Looking at the lighting levels, and colouring, between your subject and the background I'd say that the flash was contributing fairly little to the scene and most of the lighting is from ambient light. This means that any subject movement might well show up in the image. The guy second in from the left of the frame is definitely moving his head. He is visibly more blurry than the rest of the pack. It is possible that there is a tiny amount of natural movement in the others which, combined with the low sharpening, has created the slight softness you see.

With the crop and resize and output at quite high compression to fit the limits for upload to this forum as an attachment that has further diminished the apparent quality. The final icing on the cake - when you downsize an image it always requires a little sharpening afterwards in order to look its best. Again, if this had been shot raw you could have readily cropped and resized with no quality loss. As it is you're taking a double hit on JPEG compression on a file that was not quite perfect in the first place.

All that said, here is my effort to smarten it up a bit based on the original image....

Full image with a small crop and resize....

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Here are the adjustments I made in Lightroom to end up with the 100% crop as you see it here. As WB just says custom I'll mention that both Temp and Tint were set to -14.

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