No experience Newbie question (Please no laughing)
by chris johnston
on
May 4, 2006 at 4:05:06 pm
I have no prior experience with this stuff so I will just ask a few basic questions and hope nobody laughs too hard.
I borrowed a friends Canon D10 to shoot some pics. I would frame the shot in auto mode (?) and click. Most of the pics were slightly out of focus. If you zoom into the pic (to 100% / yes, its a big pic / 2000 x 2000 or so) you can see that it is slightly un focused. I don't know if the camera was at fault or even HOW the auto focus works but I have seen a few posts where the shooter says they zoom all the way in and just focus the cam on just the eyes, then once the camera is focused clearly, they pull all the way back and frame the shot and click. Is this how everyone does it? Should I be doing this? I take it that the focus stays the same and the zoom in and out has NO effect on the focus? Sorry for the stupid questions but where the still cams are involved I shoot with the $5.00 disposable cameras that I get free when I buy food at the Winn Dixie ...Ha
Re: No experience Newbie question (Please no laughing) by Art Z Angel on May 5, 2006 at 1:02:39 am
...where to start... First, the technique of zooming in for a more accurate auto focus is one the is used by many. Not saying I use it all the time, but it is good to know. Now, are the images out of focus or are do they just have an overall soft appearance? If actually out of focus, what was your shutter speed? A slow shutter speed will give you blur do to motion. What is a slow shutter speed? Typical rule is that your shutter speed should be 1/the focal length of the lens. So, if you are using a 100mm lens, the slowest shutter speed you should use would be 1/100th of a second for hand held shots. Indoor shots can be difficult at times even with a flash. Now if the images are just soft... Digital SLR's are more demanding in terms of lens quality. I can certainly see a difference between the 17-85 kit lens and the 24-105 L series lens in terms of sharpness. And the monitor you are viewing them on makes all the difference in the world. A good CRT can be very color accurate but will have a softer image. A digital display on the other hand will be much sharper (although harder to color calibrate). As a matter of fact, a digital display is typically too sharp- prints fall somewhere in-between. In any case, a soft digital image is why many photographers will apply a USM: Unsharp Mask via their photo editing program (Photoshop, Photoshop Elements and so on). SLR's will also give you depth of field- that is the larger the aperture used the only thing actually in focus is what you focused on and the background will be out of focus. Typically, you do not have as much control of DOF on a point & shoot as the distance to the sensor and/or film plane is much shorter thereby putting everything is focus. A good place to start is the Photographer's Handbook: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0679742042/sr=8-1/qid=1146790795/ref=pd_bb... It is also a good reference to keep coming back to!
All of that said, it is possible that something is amiss with either the camera or the lens. It happens. I know several pros that will send their body & lens to the manufacturer for specific calibration.
