Noob focus question

SpeedyVV

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So I took a picture:

IMG_2106_zpsqhavxl6e.jpg


Auto mode: f/4, 1/60sec, ISO-8000, 0 Steps, 70mm (taken from file properties)

Main question: What if I wanted the same picture to be not just focused on the main subject, but more of the other areas (if not all). Is that possible? How?

BTW, feel free to tell me what is "wrong" about this shot. But go easy ;-)
 
Looks good! I personally like the selective focus in this shot just fine. There are a lot of situations where you’ll want to isolate your subject and keep the background blurry. The only major issue I see with this shot is that the white balance is a little on the warm side (too yellow). Very easy to fix in post.

To answer your question, there are a few ways to get more of the shot in focus:

1) Use a smaller aperture setting, like F/8 or F/11. This will give you more depth of field, and you will have more area in sharp focus. It will also tighten up the bokeh (blurry areas) so they will appear slightly more in focus and those little blurry dots will get smaller, but you will still have blurry area. The down-side of this option is that the smaller the aperture, the less light is entering the camera, so you will have to balance the exposure brightness by using a longer shutter time, or higher ISO sensitivity. Unfortunately, in your example shot, your shutter and ISO settings are about as far as you’d want to go, so you don’t have much room to tighten the aperture.

2) The other way to get more in focus is to back up from your subject until your focus goes to the Infinity distance. Almost every lens has a certain distance where you focus as far away as it will go, and everything beyond that distance is in focus. Generally with wider lenses, the infinity distance is closer, and with telephoto lenses, it’s farther away. So if you’re shooting on a 24mm lens, infinity may only be 20 inches in front of the camera. While on a 200mm lens, the infinity distance may be 20 feet or more away.

The depth of focus increases the farther your subject is from the camera, until it reaches “infinity” and everything is in focus. So backing up from the subject will give you a deeper area of focus.

So if you really want almost everything in the shot to be in focus, the easiest way to do this is to use a wide-angle field-of-view, like in the 20mm-40mm range, back up from the subject to get them closer to "infinity" focus, and/or use a smaller aperture setting like f/8 or smaller. This will decrease the amount of light you’re capturing, so you have to compensate with the shutter and ISO settings, or just add more physical light to the scene.
 
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madFive basically covered everything. The only other thing I can say from a pragmatic sort of view, is that it's generally unlikely that you'll be able to use small apertures while indoors (unless of course you're in a studio setting or otherwise using a greater light source than general house lighting).

Unfortunately indoors you'll more than likely have to use fairly wide-open apertures from f/1.8-f/2.8 on your 50mm. Either that or you'll have to use ISOs in excess of 6400+ (which would introduce a lot of noise AKA: grain). So it's doable. Increasing the distance while using the same focal length also works, but it doesn't work necessarily from an artistic point of view if you don't end up liking the framing.

Basically this is one of those situations in which you start figuring out a big piece of the art of photography. This is a limitation of the tools you have and you have to figure out the compromise that best represents what it is you're trying to accomplish. You can achieve greater depth of field (that is to say, more in focus) by stopping down the f/8 or f/11 as madFive suggests, but this will come at the cost of noise or possibly a blurry picture due to decreasing the shutter speed. Outdoors during the day, you'll generally not have this problem. In that situation you can basically cherry pick all the settings you want. This is where it gets a bit trickier.

So: experiment! See what you come up with.
 
Guys, that is brilliant!

I actually almost understand everything you said ;-)

Kidding aside, I have been reading the book you recommended, and this actually makes sense.

The whole idea is, if you guys don't mind, as I have question, you guys are very helpful in confirming what I read, or direct me more to what I read.

What you guys said, actually I don't think is well covered in that book.

So, once again, thanks so much for sharing the knowledge.
 
Oh, just so that you are aware.

I have decided to mostly use "auto" mode right now and shoot away. Except, sometimes I use manual focus.

I have been going into Lightroom and checking the pictures and seeing what settings the camera picks and the result. Been pretty interesting, as the camera picks things, and I almost can see the impact based on what I read from the book.

Honestly, having a blast learning the basics.
 
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