focusing d90

[Anne12343]

Ok, I got the right forum now. Sorry about putting it in the wrong place. I am having trouble focusing with my Nikon d90. I tried sharpening in Photoshop to no avail. It just made the picture look worse. I put the camera on default and shot on auto, but it's still blurry. Can anyone help? Is it the camera, lens (18-200) or operator problems. I need help on using this camera with where is the focal point!! Thanks

[Chip]

I have a D90, too.

If you haven't changed the default auto-focus mode, then it seems that the camera picked the focus point for you and decided to focus on the wall for some reason.

Take a look at p. 56 of your manual. That page tells you how to get the camera out of the default auto focus mode and pick one of the 11 focus points yourself. Doing so - and putting yourself in charge of the focus point - almost always leads to more accurate focus.

The more you do this, the more it will become second nature, and you'll miss less photos due to poor focus. It just takes practice.

P.S. Can you post your EXIF data, too? It might help us figure out if there's some motion blur, too.

[RLucas]

The focus looks good to me. I would, however, change a couple of things. According to your EXIF, you shot this in shutter priority. You may want to try changing it to aperture priority, and stop it down a little. I also noticed you used matrix metering. You may want to try spot metering, and meter off of the faces. In this shot, the wall looks properly exposed, while the faces look overexposed.

And as far as the focus point is concerned, i would use a focus point somewhere on the middle row . Hope this helps!

[Anne12343]

Hi, I shot at 3.5, 1/1000/sec. Focal length 20.0. Thanks for any other help. Is there any other data you need?