Focus Mystery

[Doug Sundseth]

On the portrait, it looks like you grabbed focus reasonably well, but the plane that is most in focus is the subject's fingernails. With that camera and focal length at about 10', you'll have 1.5 - 2' depth of field (see DOFMaster for more DoF information). If the principle focus plane is the fingernails, you have less than a foot back from that point. My suspicion is that DoF is the cause of your problem there.

For the flower, if you're using autofocus, you'll find that shades of white are really hard to get solidly in focus. In that case, it looks to me like you just missed focus. (Nice composition, BTW.)

[fuller1031]

Originally Posted by Doug Sundseth

On the portrait, it looks like you grabbed focus reasonably well, but the plane that is most in focus is the subject's fingernails. With that camera and focal length at about 10', you'll have 1.5 - 2' depth of field (see DOFMaster for more DoF information). If the principle focus plane is the fingernails, you have less than a foot back from that point. My suspicion is that DoF is the cause of your problem there.

For the flower, if you're using autofocus, you'll find that shades of white are really hard to get solidly in focus. In that case, it looks to me like you just missed focus. (Nice composition, BTW.)

Yeah, that's what I was suspecting too because when I noticed her nails were in focus, I was a little disheartend when I thought to myself that the rest of her would be less and less focused. (You are spot on, her nails are about a foot in front of where her head is based on the seating arragement).

And I was actually using manual focus too. :/ Although I did the same shot with AF and there was no real difference. And thanks for the compliment. I did some editing and the picture is useable for a different form in my portfolio, but the focus thing is still just very annoying! >

[fuller1031]

Originally Posted by sk66

yes/no. on your body diffraction begins to occur at ~f/11....you would be better off focus stacking images as even f/32 wouldn't give a very large dof.

Oh. Ok. I never actually knew that, but it makes sense. Thanks for the suggestion!