how to shoot...

[Tupi Guy]

i've had my canon 500D for a few months now, but i'm still pretty much a noob

the problem i'm experiencing at the moment would be DOF! i do like DOF, & its really good for artistic shots and all, but sometimes i just want an entirely sharp picture!!

for example, i'd like to take group shots of people without having one or two persons with blur DOF-ed faces it really irks me when i find shots like that.

most of the time when i take these kind of shots i use centre-focusing, but it doesn't really help.

any of you clubsnappers out there know the solution?

P.S. i know raising the aperture no. kills the DOF, but its really impossible for me to shoot with high no. aperture unless i use a tripod! and i can't possibly bring a tripod out with me all the time :/.

Perhaps understand more abit will be good

 

[filmfarmer]

Go to aperture priority mode(The A in MASP),Set your aperture to about f11(f8 if it is a bit dark),pop up your flash.you lose some details on your background but you will get everybody in focus.

 

[aspenx]

haha well that'd take a bit of saving up/ starving first, flashes don't come any cheaper than lens do :/ and then i'd have to master bouncing & diffusing flash too.

actually i've considered getting a compact as well, but i feel like i'd get more reliant on the compact and get less practice on my DSLR! plus semipros (ahh S90!!).. not as cheap as i'd like them to be.

My flash is cheaper than any of my lenses though... And it's still less than half price of the S90. :bsmilie:

 

[ahbian]

actually i'm more worried about formal shots because informal shots are somewhat 'less important' so its alright if there's a little out-of-focusness here and there.



:S urm can i make my in-built flash do this rear-curtain thing? so must it be an external flash?

thinking about an example, i reckon like ten plus people on a low stage (2 rows of people), poor lighting, i'm not sure how to guage distance but its not very far because we were allowed to choose where to stand, 18-55 standard lens. @_@ how old..?

hmm, if its a formal shot and you are allowed to choose where you can stand; to increase your chances of a better shot, select a well-lit area then. Also, its a bit hard for me to imagine that the motion blur can be so drastic since they are already anticipating the shot already.

 

[kaixiang]

If it's a stage, make the technician guy turn on ALL the lights and you should get enough light. I've done this before and it makes a huge difference. If you camera has some kind of IS or VR most people can handhold at 1/15 without motion blur and do a countdown so that the people know when to stop fidgeting.

 

[nuttybrenda]

Perhaps understand more abit will be good

erm okay thanks for the link

Go to aperture priority mode(The A in MASP),Set your aperture to about f11(f8 if it is a bit dark),pop up your flash.you lose some details on your background but you will get everybody in focus.

O_O ooh, i'll try that next time, thanks!

My flash is cheaper than any of my lenses though... And it's still less than half price of the S90. :bsmilie:

haha no flash is going to be cheaper than my f/1.8! but yup, i've dropped the s90 idea alr.. flash it is!

hmm, if its a formal shot and you are allowed to choose where you can stand; to increase your chances of a better shot, select a well-lit area then. Also, its a bit hard for me to imagine that the motion blur can be so drastic since they are already anticipating the shot already.

If it's a stage, make the technician guy turn on ALL the lights and you should get enough light. I've done this before and it makes a huge difference. If you camera has some kind of IS or VR most people can handhold at 1/15 without motion blur and do a countdown so that the people know when to stop fidgeting.

:l its a HDB block area stage, so there was barely any special lighting set up, it was a really simple event. haha i'll definitely request people in the photo to stay darn still next time!!

 

[flashbug]

How out of focus is it?

Bumping ISO is the best way, but if it is not enough, maybe you can sacrifice megapixels instead, by using the cropping method. One cheap solution would be to stand further away from your subject as it increases the depth of field too. After which you can crop the center of your image (area which you really want). This is useful if your camera boosts many many megapixels or you just intend to print 4R size anyway.

For group photos, make sure their faces are more or less in the same plane, because having 3 or more rows of people not only make some of their faces OOF, but create problems when using flash as some faces might be darker than others, or some too overexposed =X

If it is just a LITTLE Out Of Focus, you can always increase the clarity, or use photoshop or lightroom to do a little sharpening to make the edges and features more prominent.

In general, under low lightings, choose to shoot wide and crop if you aren't that perculiar about details and megapixels. I think that it beats having out of focused faces

Compact tend to take sharper images because they have generally very very short focal length which makes the depth of field so large that it is often impossible to not be able to focus on everything you want. The trade off will also be that it is difficult to isolate your subject enough from the backgrd to make it 'stand out'