How to get clear photos???

[Krstgarrison]

I have a D5000 with a Tamron 18-270. I was wondering what people use as primary settings for portrait style photos to obtain clear, sharp shots. I normally use Program mode, but may switch to Aperture Priority. If I do a shoot with more than one subject it seems all subjects are not in focus. Am I doing something wrong?

Thanks!

[tomservo51]

I have a D5000 with a Tamron 18-270. I was wondering what people use as primary settings for portrait style photos to obtain clear, sharp shots. I normally use Program mode, but may switch to Aperture Priority. If I do a shoot with more than one subject it seems all subjects are not in focus. Am I doing something wrong?

Thanks!

There are lots of things that affect your depth of field, your focal length, distance of object your focusing on.....

The biggest factor will be your focal ratio. The larger your aperture in relation to your focal lenth or (smaller f#) the smaller area you will have in focus.

Try increasing your aperture, so if you are in AV move, set it to f11 or higher. Keep in mind this will less light so you may need to change your ISO. In daylight you should have no problems.

Sorry if this is confusing but there are a lot of concepts here.

[doctorjames]

I agree with Tom...

There are a lot of concepts here to have to get to grips with. If you dont know what certain things mean, feel free to ask, or look it up within DPS

You need to decide what you want to have in focus, and make sure your depth of field allows for that.
- basically, the larger the f-stop, the greater the depth of field (distances that will be in focus).

The downside to this is that you will have to slow the shutter speed, so watch that you dont go too slow. a basic rule is that your shutterspeed should never go below your lens focal length, so when set at 50mm you shouldnt go slower than 1/50th second. Too slow and you will end up with blurry shots again.

Start simple and work your way up.

Buy/borrow a simple photography 'how to' book, so you understand the concepts.

Dont run before you can crawl.... I am only on a fast crawl after quite a few years.

[Krstgarrison]

Thanks for all of yall help! Do yall prefer Program mode over AV mode or vice versa for portrait shots?

[tomservo51]

Thanks for all of yall help! Do yall prefer Program mode over AV mode or vice versa for portrait shots?

I switch between AV, Manual, and sometimes shutter priority. It depends on what I'm shooting, when , where, and what result I'm looking for. I'd like to always use manual but I'm not fast enough yet to always count on getting a good shot in quickly changing conditions. And sometimes I'm just lazy

[BigFuzzy]

Part of the issue is that you have to get out of the mindset that one setting will work for all portraits.

Most experienced photographers will prefer to work with the setting that best gives them the control needed to achieve the shot they have in mind. That's where you need to be headed in terms of thinking.

You need to be thinking "why are some out of focus" then, when you learn (from above posts) that what you're doing wrong is Depth of Field related, you need to be thinking "ok, how then do I get a grasp on DoF".. then you need to think "what controls depth of field"... and so on.

In the end, I use Manual or AV for portraits. And AV is used when I care about minimizing depth of field.. which is a lot for me.
A studio photographer is almost always going to tell you Manual.

Maybe the best question is, what sort of style are you trying to achieve?