Yeah, I know what you mean
See, I use a 35mm (did have a 50m 1.8D (loved the lens) but just found it fractionally too long indoors).
With the 35m, I have a little bit more room to crop slightly as well, just another option and might help you a small amount if looking at the centre point and doing minimum recompose?
From a few feet away, it should still be faiiiirly easy (with a bit of luck
) to get your focus achieved, without flash 1/60th ish is very achievable for me indoors and easy for me to handle if they are sitting around (jumping etc forget it
), can handhold lower, but I find this OK a lot of the time if they are still! (forgetting flash here). If I want a bit faster (still natural light talking here), i'll go to iso400 or 800 from iso200...again...big deal in this day and age
Got to pick your moments as well
Try even 2.8 and put your iso up a stop see if you notice such a difference between apertures around the house. Also look at the distance between your background and subject, will will help if you are looking for subject isolation. It's a lot of little things making a big difference.
I'll miss maybe 1 in 10 from spot on focus on their eyes (noticeable if I pixel peep and got their eyebrow instead of eye etc - gets silly tbh).
My methods are not the best for some, but it works a lot for ME. It's all practice though, not really any shortcuts are there?:shrug: and finding what works for YOU. Some will never advocate focus/recompose fro example, and fair enough what works for them.
Also, centre point focus is supposedly the most realiable, again, i dont have that much experience using other points tbh, just what i've heard.