Why can't they all be in focus?

[Kraigjaykal]

My problem is when I have more than one person in a picture, the closest person is in focus and the person 6 inches behind isn't. I have been reading about different lenses, could that be the problem? I use a Canon EOS 40D with a Canon 28-135mm lens.

[ceremus]

Let's learn about Depth of Field!



Basically in your case, what sounds like is happening is your DoF is too short, some of your subjects are within the field and are in focus, while some are not. The method often used to correct this is to use a smaller aperture (larger f/number) to increase the DoF.

[Kraigjaykal]

Thank you! That video was VERY helpful!

[Fattymoocow]

I wasn't sure if I was supposed to start a new thread or not, but since this was basically the same question I had with a few other questions I thought it would be okay to post in here.

Hi, I was going to post about this as well. I just bought a Canon 50mm f1.4 and had my first chance at taking portrait photography with my family but came across a few problems after I went back to my computer and saw the pictures uploaded.

1. Only the people in the focus point were in focus. You answered this already by stating that the dof was too short. I understand this concept and tried to compensate for this while I was taking pictures by using a smaller aperture as you have suggested. I believe I went up to a F8.0 and couldn't go too much higher because of another factor. As I used a smaller aperture, I ran into another problem.

2. The photos I took (at Thanksgiving with family) was all indoors and was at night. When I increased my dof and used a smaller aperture my pictures became really dark. I had to compensate for this by increasing my ISO. I basically had to get up to a 3200 ISO and I could tell even on my camera's LCD screen that I was going to have very gritty pictures. But this was the only way that I had good exposure in my photos. I was able to get more people focused but at the same time I lost out on the quality of the photo because my pictures became much more gritty. This grittiness was very apparent once I had uploaded my photos and tried to do some post editing.

Is there something that you can do about this and as a compromise between exposure/quality of the photo? I know I can introduce a better light source to fix this but in situations where I don't have the equipment to include additional light, how can I compensate for these two factors? I had used a bounced flash as well but my bounce flash didn't reach my subjects as well because it was a bigger group photo and I was set at 50mm so I had to back up a lot to be able to get everyone into the photo. Since I had to back up, my flash was not as useful (I do not have a speedlight flash, I was just bouncing the light using the popup flash).

Please please if anyone can help me with this it would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!!

[Doug Sundseth]

To increase exposure, add light (whether flash or constant), increase the time the shutter is open, raise the ISO, or increase the aperture (or some combination).

There is no fifth option.

[ceremus]

When you're in a challenging low-light situations like that, often indoors, it becomes a balancing act as you experienced first hand. There are a few different ways to approach the hurdle.

One is to use a wider aperture but try and make sure your subjects are on as close to the same focal plane as possible, meaning (hopefully) that they're all within the depth of field. You can also increase your distance from your subjects to increase your DoF, but that might not give you the framing you're looking for.

Another approach (while still using a smaller aperture like f/4 or f/5.6) may be to make your shutter speeds longer. Mind you, once you get to speeds longer than 1/100, 1/80, and slower, you need to make sure you have good handholding technique, or stabilize your camera on a tripod or just a flat, stable surface. Keep in mind the less able your subjects are able or willing to remain still, the less useful this technique will be.

And of course the more obvious solution, increase the light, either with a flash or just finding a way to increase your available ambient light.

If you absolutely must shoot at a higher ISO, shoot in RAW instead of JPEG. Your post-processing software will have options to reduce noise, whether you're using Lightroom, or just Digital Photo Professional (the freebie on the CD that came with your camera).

[Fattymoocow]

Hi! Thanks for both of your responses! I forgot to mention in my original post that I had also slowed down my shutter speed so that I would be able to get more light but I was going down to around 1/25. I am pretty good at holding steady so that's usually not the issue. I don't like going that slow but I've gotten used to it. But yes, I did slow down my shutter speed and I was still needing to be at around 3200 ISO.

One thing I didn't do that Ceremus suggested was to shoot in RAW. I was shooting in JPEG only because it was just a little difficult to process those photos afterwards but I just bought a better editing software yesterday and can finally leave Picasa so I will start shooting in RAW from now on.

But basically, this was my scenario:

1. Aperture of 5.6-8.0 so that my group photos everyone would be in focus but also equated to me having very little light in my photos...then to compensate for that.
2. ISO 3200 to compensate for the dim lights indoors at night..very gritty pictures and still a bit dark.
3. Shutter speeds ranging from about 1/25-1/50 to get even more light but I also just see a lot of noise in my photos.
4. Tried to compensate by adding light to the photos by using a bounced flash (via my popup flash) but since some of the group photos were with a bigger group of people, I had to stand farther back to be able to get everyone into the shot so the flash was not as effective.

So I guess I tried all of my options to try to compensate for the low light environment except for shooting in RAW so that I could at least fix the issues I encountered in the post editing process. Did I do anything else wrong that someone else would have done differently?

Thanks again for your comments!

[photog1107]

Just one other side note, as I found myself in almost exactly the situation you describe with my own family portrait this Thanksgiving, and even with the best balancing act, sometimes it's still not optimal. If you can purchase, or have access to, a decent noise reduction program, this can drastically clean up a noisy/gritty photo. You have to be careful not to OVERuse, but using noise reduction available through Lightroom3 or thru a standalone/PSE plugin like Noiseware can help the situation in post.

[Fattymoocow]

Thank you for your response Photog1107! I will look into this and hopefully I can get Lightroom in the near future so that I can utilize this to improve my night time indoor technique.