Christmas lights bokeh by whatsthatpicture
It is the holiday season again. You may be tempted to take photos of the beautiful Christmas lights. How about getting creative and shoot them out of focus? The result is the beautiful and dreamy light circles like what you see below the title of this post. Read More…
Many recently introduced digital single lens reflex (DSLR) cameras have a new shooting mode called Live View. Live View mode is nothing new for digital cameras. Actually, almost all compact (point and shoot) digital cameras have them. Most people know how slow the auto focus (AF) on P&S camera is. Is Live View really useful for DSLR cameras? Read More…
When shooting a close-up of people’s face, it is highly desirable to have their eyes in sharp focus and at the same time render the background blurry to avoid distractions. This situation typically requires accurate focus and large lens aperture. Here are some tips on how to focus on the eyes.
Focus-and-recompose technique should typically work fairly. On many cameras, the center focus point is the most sensitive and accurate. Therefore it may be the best option to simply focus on the eyes and recompose the frame. Be aware that focus-and-recomposes can have some pitfalls.
If you are concerned about focus accuracy using focus-and-recompose technique, another way is to use a off-center focusing sensor point. Many cameras have multiple focusing sensor points. Choose the one that’s right over the eye when the desired composition is achieved. If no focusing sensor point is exactly over the eyes, just select the one that is nearest to the eyes then do the focus-and-recompose. This will minimize the focusing error. Or you can compose loosely so there is a focus sensor point over the eyes, then crop the photo to desired composition.
Finally, you can always try manual focus if the light is not too dim.
If you still cannot get a good focus on the eyes, you may need to increase the depth of field (DOF) by stopping down the aperture. What may happen then is the shutter speed becomes too slow. In this case, you will need to either increase the ISO or shoot with flash.
Focus and recompose is a very commonly used photography technique. Photographer focuses on the subject that needs to be in sharp focus then recomposes the photo in order to achieve a more pleasant composition by adhere to photography rules such as the rule of the third and golden section. Modern cameras have multiple focus sensors, which appears to have made this technique not as useful as it once was. Some even claim that it causes focus errors due to the optical characteristics of modern camera lenses. However there are still occasions that you find the focus and recompose technique useful and without focus errors. Read on to find out some tips of focus and recompose technique. Read More…
