Loads of you have got in touch and asked the question where do i focus in order
to get nice sharp pictures? great question.
Focusing isn't the only thing you need to think about though in order to get
sharp images,
you have to work with your depth of field as well.
The focus and the depth of field kind of dance together, depth of field is how much
front to back in your picture is sharp and focus is where you put the
points of focus.
Now some pictures will have a subject within the image and it's really obvious what
that subject is, such as with a portrait.
With other pictures you may have the whole image as the subject
as with a landscape.
what you have to do is to choose the aperture and point of focus which is
appropriate to whatever it is that you're shooting.
So I've come to join Lorna in her portrait
we're right in each other's personal space here, but there you go.
Now, with a person
you always look them in the eye,
so the place to focus is
smack bang right there in the middle of the eye.
We're shooting this with a long-ish lens, now a long lens has a
shallow depth of field
if you use a wide aperture it will really make that depth of field very
very shallow, that is the amount of front to back that's sharp.
Now, with a portrait you want to concentrate on Lorna here, so
the background what's going on over there all soft and fuzzy that's perfect.
when you go to focus
put your little gun sight area mode and choose where you're going to put the gun sight
compose the shot look where Lorna's eyes are look for the gun sight in
the view finder
press the button to get the focus and then shoot it.
compose focus shoot because if you focuse it and then hold it waiting for the
shot to get better when you move around the chances are you'll move yourself a bit and
your shot will be out of focus
and there's nothing worse than a portrait shot with blurry eyes.
With a shot like this,
where we've got Laurence
the moody skateboarder
let's say this is a portrait okay, that makes Laurence the subject of the shot.
we're still using a long lens, we're still using a wide aperture which is
giving us a shallow depth of field.
so the point of contact in the picture is Laurence, you want to focus on his eyes
the skateboard soft, but we want a skateboard there because we want to see he's
a skateboarder
but it's Laurence we want the subject of the picture to be.
Suppose it's a different scenario for a moment
let's say this is a shot for the skateboard manufacturer
they're more interested in their skateboard than in Laurence, but they still want
Laurence in the shot.
So the subject has changed from Laurence to the skateboard.
So what we have to do is
is focus here,
on the skateboard.
Now the skateboard is nice and bright and sharp
and Laurence
is a little bit soft in the background, but he's still there, he's still discernible.
There is of course a third option with this,
let's say you want to get
the skateboard nice and sharp
and Laurence nice and sharp,
now we're moving into the realm of
depth of field big time.
The way to do that is to go to a big wide aperture
like F two point eight or F five point six, we're going to shove it down to about
F sixteen or F twenty two.
Now when you do that the picture will go really really dark, because the hole in
your lens has got tiny.
what you have to do to compensate is to make your shutter speed last longer
you need a slower shutter speed,
to let that might burn onto the chip.
So, as janey changes the aperture the shot's gone really really dark.
She's now doing the equivalent of extending the exposure time using a slower
shutter speed to bring the light back in and get the shot.
Now you should have a nice sharp skateboard and a nice sharp Laurence.
In fact you can even see the blades of grass in the foreground a bit better
which janey's shooting through just to sort of give it a bit of
atmosphere.
There is of course one last scenario with this,
and that's a really wide angle lens.
now we've got the same shot and the same location despite the fact it looks
completely different Laurence looks further away and the skateboard looks closer and
we can see sheds that weren't there before,
that's because the wide lens is wide, it's sucking in more stuff from
around the scene.
Also everything is front to back sharp.
Wide-angle lenses or short lenses are also known for inheriting massive
depths of field,
everything from the skateboard to me to Laurence
and then of towards the horizon is sharp,
despite the fact
when you're using quite a wide-ish aperture of an F five point six .
Because of this massive depth of field
it's far less critical where you focus if you're using a very wide angled lens
so long as you're somewhere between the skateboard and Laurence
they'll both be sharp.