Motion tips - 'object in focus'

[NicolaB]

I took these yesterday of my little ones. I guess I need to up my ss to 1000 and close down to aperture to get more in focus as much as the lighting allows?

I would like the girls to be in as sharp a focus as possible. Is there a tip to where I should focus? Am I hoping for a miracle tip when it is just trial and error?????

Are there any other tips you can offer to get a moving target in sharp focus (ideally their faces)?


Exposure 0.002 sec (1/500)
Aperture f/2.8
Focal Length 24 mm
ISO Speed 1600

tia

[RichardTaylor]

If shooting at F2.8 and relatively close, unless you have both subjects on the same plane you do not have a lot of depth of field to play with.

See this calculator
Online Depth of Field Calculator

For tracking moving subjects I set my camera up;
Centre focus point only and focus tracking on (AI servo for Canon)
I will try to shoot a bit "loose", leaving some room around my subject for composition adjustments when cropping.

In your example above There are a couple of things you could have tried.
(1) Shoot a 1/250 & F4 to give you a bit more DOF. (I'm not so sure subjects will be frozen enough)
(2) Shoot at a higher ISO (and a smaller aperture) and use noise reduction when PPing.
(3) Use flash, preferably off camera (set up so lighting appears natural) to freeze the subjects (because of the short flash duration) and shoot at a smaller aperture to give you more DOF.

.

[NicolaB]

As always Richard - thank you :-)

[LoveDSLR]

Flash or

Since the motion is across (vertical here), your shutter speed has to be faster. You have the choice of using a faster shutter speed (with high fps) or wait just before the motion almost reaches its peak and shoot (need practices).

Originally Posted by NicolaB

Exposure 0.002 sec (1/500)
Aperture f/2.8
Focal Length 24 mm
ISO Speed 1600

Being a lazy person, I'll use zone focusing with a wider angle lens and then crop later. To maintain EV 7.9, you can consider using 1/1000s, f/4, ISO 6400 (EV 8).

[NicolaB]

I'll go with the lazy approach ;-) (couldn't see your name anywhere so) Thanks LoveDSLR

I didn't get to try again today as they were in meltdown. I will try later in the week.

[APhotoSchool]

You'll definitely want to try and get a higher aperture. Looks like the boy is in focus but the girl is not. Do you have a flash you can try popping? That would make all the difference! Here's an article on focus that could help you as well: Nailing Focus

---
Connor Walberg
Learn to shoot action sports at Action Photo School