Advice on focusing please

blondie606

blondie606

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Name
Lynne
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Hi all,I've been trying to get a specific shot & failing miserably everytime:bang:
I don't know if I'm asking the camera/lens for something it's not capable of doing.....or if I'm just being a muppet:shrug:

Below is the shot I was trying for. I wanted to get the whole thing in sharp focus,admittedly the bottle & blue bits were not pin sharp on the card but it is frustrating the hell out of me

Ring_2.jpg


I was using my kit lens :
Nikor 18-55
Daylight(good)
Exposure 1/60
f16
ISO 250
Focal length 32mm
4.5 aperture
Pattern metering

I could only get one point of focus so the rest became blurry .I spent about an hour goin through different settings & even tried my 70-300 lens but had the same issue. With most of my photos I like/need a shallow DOF but just this once I didn't :shrug:
What was I doing wrong?

thanks in advance,Lynne
 
i'm confused, you wrote f/16 and aperture 4.5? i'm guessing it was f/16 if you were looking for increased depth of field.

how far from the subject were you?

here's the dof table for the camera and focal length you quoted

http://www.dofmaster.com/doftable.html

edit: it's gone to the default home page, just input your figures lol

but it says that from 0.5 meters you should have a dof of about 15cm's
 
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Exif says it was shot at f/16.

To be honest, I think the DoF is fine, it's all legible but puts the focus on the rings.

However, the easiest way to get more DoF is to shoot from further away and crop down (or use a shorter length) or you could try shooting so that more of the image is in the plane of focus (not sure you'd get the angle you want though - would require some playing around).
 
if you shoot at minimum zoom ie 18mm on that lens, that will give you your maximum depth of field
 
I think your perhaps reaching the extreme end of your minimum focus? like the other guys have said, 18mm and then move back a touch and just crop to get the shot, that fine detail inside the rings is so fine going to be difficult to make out, what sort of size are you looking to produce this at, would it really show on say a 7x5?
 
When shooting very close to the subject dof is an issue no matter the aperture you use. Move the camera away to get more dof and then crop in. There are enough pixels on todays cameras to get a decent sized print still.
 
Only way to improve this is to use a perspective control lens.
 
Thanks for the replies people.Not sure if I'm more confused or less now :lol:

I really struggle with the technial side of photography ,I'm ok with bikes & big things but this close up type stuff is all new.

I tried shooting from further away but it looked so small I never even considered cropping :bang:
Gonna have another go & try with the 70-300 as well from a greater distance & crop. Only spent about 4 hours playing with it this weekend so another few hours this week won't matter:clap:

I'm not wanting to print it particularly just get the whole thing in focus & close up & it would be nice to still be able to read the inscription on the ring. I was doing it for the POTY comp (no chance of being good enough to get anywhere in the comp just wanted to give it a try) .I settled on a slightly different take on the image & played in PSE with it - thats something else I'm new to!

Hey ho,keep trying,keep learning just thank god it's digital not film 'cos I'd have used about 10 rolls of film on that little project:lol:

Oh yes...what on earth is a perspective lens? where do you buy one & how much do they cost ?:D

Cheers,Lynne
 
Longer lens will likely mean smaller dof. Wider lens more dof.

OR Set the camera on a tripod. Take 2 or three images and merge together and dleter the oof parts on each image - called focus stacking :)

THis shot should not be too difficult though....
 
Thanks again for all the info guy's:thumbs:

Had a look at the Perspective lens....wowee,me wants one 1,just gotta win the lottery 1st:eek:

Now Focus stacking......

For the shot I ended up posting I took 2 photo's & layered them in the camera then fiddled in PSE7 to get the final image which I've just looked at again & seen my mistakes,but hey I''m learning & this was the 1st attempt !

What sort of editing suite does the Focus stack of more than 2 shots? My camera only allows 2 & I can't see anything on PSE7 but then I oly just found the lighting effects section:lol:

DOF I understand,need to find out about OOF now...off for a search.


It's begining to make me wonder how anyone can hold down a day job when there's soooo many things to learn/practise & discover with this photography malarky :)
 
blondie606 said:
Thanks again for all the info guy's:thumbs:

Had a look at the Perspective lens....wowee,me wants one 1,just gotta win the lottery 1st:eek:

Now Focus stacking......

For the shot I ended up posting I took 2 photo's & layered them in the camera then fiddled in PSE7 to get the final image which I've just looked at again & seen my mistakes,but hey I''m learning & this was the 1st attempt !

What sort of editing suite does the Focus stack of more than 2 shots? My camera only allows 2 & I can't see anything on PSE7 but then I oly just found the lighting effects section:lol:

DOF I understand,need to find out about OOF now...off for a search.


It's begining to make me wonder how anyone can hold down a day job when there's soooo many things to learn/practise & discover with this photography malarky :)
Click to expand...

if your wanting to stack photos try taking 30+ it will give you a much better image overall, if not very large...

http://www.heliconsoft.com/heliconfocus.html is the one i use (only the free version) but it does get very good results :)
 
hyperfocal distance applicable?

f16 should give you plenty of depth fo field but if it is all stacked towards focusing on the 'near' aspect of the scene the 'far' may still be thrown out

It is normally a landscape technique but it may be applicable in other situations, including the one you were experiencing where despite going for a failry open aperture you still don't have quite enough DoF
 
My 2p

Further to Ricks post, perhaps you could put a drawing pin or something between the rings and the blue bits, focus on that then take the drawing pin away and take the shot.
should get your plane of focus more central perhaps.

Also surprised no ones suggested trying f22. Ok its not recommended by all the experts but i bet it won't be that much worse, if any, than f16 and you should get more in focus and achieve the shot you want.

HTH
 
It seems to me that this is simply a matter of distance from subject.

Using the estimate of 1 foot from the subject (the lens iirc has a minimum focus distance of 11 inches) you have an area in focus that is rather small.
Compounding this is the fact that you are not shooting square on to the subject, thus making the area that needs to be sharp larger than the available dof.
Simply moving back to 2 feet would make all the difference.

Are you using a tripod? Shooting at 1/60 you may not be keeping the camera as still as you think you are.
 
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