Difficult to focus

[a73210]

Hi All,
I need a help.While taking a photo which is a landscape e.g a person in front and a building in the back I am not able to get the focus on the complete image.Either the building gets in focus or the person.

What settings shd I use to get this done

Please help

Thanks
-Mukul

[RichardTaylor]

Small aperture, like =>F11
See this Depth of field (zone of sharpness) calculator to get an idea of what to expect.

Online Depth of Field Calculator

You may need to focus at the hyperfocal distance (see the above link) in some cases where you want maximum usable Depth of field.

[Photologyst]

If the colors and the lighting are similar the AF many get confused. Try using manual focus in that case.

[navcom]

It's a depth of field issue. Depth of field is controlled by the lens aperture as well as the focal length of the lens. The more you "zoom in", the less DOF you will have. Also, the larger your aperture (smaller the f/number), the less DOF you will have.

So it could be either of these. What focal length were you shooting at? i.e. 35mm, 75mm, 150mm, etc.?

One final note...you can never get an entire image in perfect focus unless everything in the image were on the exact same plane...and unless you are taking a picture of something like a flat sign with nothing else in the image, it won't happen. It's possible to get close with a small aperture and wide angle lens, but never perfect.

Hope that helps!

[EmmGee]

One other thing to remember is that the smaller your aperture, the slower your shutter speed will need to be to achieve the same exposure so, if you weren't already, it might be worth using a tripod to avoid camera shake.

[a73210]

Thanks All for the valuable suggestion.Small apperature is a technique which I know and tried many times,however I am still trying to master this


Richard,
Thanks for the online calculator.I will try that

reff is the added image