Are you focusing and recomposing each time for portraits?
Would you say you explore both depending on what your aperture is set at?
Amy Porter wrote: What a long day. Hope you can give me a little food for thought. What I was curious about is what focus technique you are using for portraits? Are you focusing and recomposing your shots or will you move your focus point?
Would you say you explore both depending on what your aperture is set at?
I never focus recompose with portraits. Shallow depth of field portrait photography has been in vogue for quite a while and focus is critical usually on the eyes. If you focus recompose the angle of view / distance also changes and at a wide aperture that´s enough to throw the eyes out of the focus plane.
effron wrote: Nobody is focusing then, say standing up to recompose. Its a slight movement and won't move the point of focus enough to make a difference, even wide open. Again, there is more than one way to get it done, best is what works best for you....
We seem to be at odds on this subject?
Yep there are other ways to get accurate focus, even with manual lenses it´s called using focus peaking, but not many camera´s incorporate this - the D850 and the Sony camera´s both excel in this department.
If you are fortunate enough to have a Sony then Face detection or the more accurate Eye AF will nail the shot 9 times out of 10
Below is a diagram of how easy it is to miss the focal plane on a simple portrait using the focus recompose methods: The lens is a 50mm @ F:1.4 aperture which is not unusual for a portrait. The camera sensor is 4 feet (or 121.92 centimeters) from the subject focusing on the eye. If you recompose for the frame then your focus point lays around the chest which is a full 6 inches (or 15.24 centimeters) behind the eye which was the original focus point.
The focus plane is only 0.16 of a foot (or 4.8768 centimeters) which means you have missed the intended focus point by a mile in terms of accuracy in a portrait.
If you shoot at F:5.6 or longer then you´ll get the eyes in focus with the recompose method as the focal plane will now be 0.64 feet (or 19.5072 centimeters) giving more latitude to cover the back focus. Hope this explains things for people struggling getting sharp focus with the recompose method. BTW it´s very easy to test with a spyderlenscal whats happening in the diagram and the math is even easier to understand.
Suffice it to say i think the author had the answer in her last sentence, "both are explored depending on aperture"
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