Foreground out of focus

[Scott UK]

Hi
I was taking photos at race for life yesterday and when checking through them the vast majority had issues where the person/s I was trying to capture were out of focus and the ones further back were in focus.
This of course was not what I was after.
I was obviously doing something wrong or totally set the camera wrong.
Any tips and help would be greatly received, as I am still trying to get into photography but I keep trying to run before walking

Many Thanks
Scott

 

[tdodd]

First things that spring to mind are....

- You were in One Shot or AI Focus mode instead of AI Servo and the focus stayed put while your subject continued to move forward.

- You were using AI Servo, but not maintaining accurate placement of the AF point over the intended subject.

- You've configured the camera for back button AF but were sometimes forgetting to press the button, or not pressing it hard enough to operate the AF.

- You were in AI Servo mode, with all AF points active instead of just one, and were not initially using the centre point to lock onto the intended subject. With all points active in AI Servo mode the camera does not know which part of the scene is your subject, so you must always start with the centre point positioned on the subject. Even then, it is possible with a busy field that the handover from centre point to a peripheral point was not successful and the AF simply switched to the wrong subject.

If you have DPP installed then open your shots in that and check where the active AF point was positioned relative to the subject and also press CTRL-I to check the EXIF data and the AF mode in use.

 

[gad-westy]

Do you know which focussing mode you were using? For moving targets, I would typically use servo focusing. It's called AF-C on Nikon but maybe AI on Canon? It'll continually track the movement of your subject until you press the shutter. It sounds like you were using a different focus mode (I think Canon call it o'ne shot') where by, once the camera has locked focus on something, the focus doesn't change until you take the shot, so if your subject then moves forward, they'll be out of focus.


Edited to say, typed too slow and beaten to it!

 

[Scott UK]

Thanks for the replies, I was on ai servo, but thinking about it I don't think I was following individuals rather than a group of people, which would of course case the issues I mentioned.
User error I guess

Well you learn by your mistakes, just need them to rerun the race

 

[shaylou]

As Phil always says and I quote, "letting the camera choose your focus point is for suckers (actually I think he said idiots but we will go with this). Lol.

Seriously it helps to choose your focus point and not let the camera do it for you. The camera has little idea of what you are truly trying to shoot. If you posted an example you would get right to the bottom of the problem in two shakes. Could be this or maybe even a wrong apiture setting giving too shallow of dof. No way to know for sure without a pic.