colbyseider
Earning My Ears
- Joined
- Apr 28, 2007
I've had my D5300 for just over a year and I love it. I am not new to photography as an art form; my first year of college was in a university fine arts program which didn't go so well.
Now I'm back in the advanced hobbyist mindset and I have just returned from a short trip where some of the pictures I took are slightly out of focus.
I typically shoot in single point AF mode and control most focusing with depth of field (stopping down if I want more in focus than just my main subject).
Sometimes, however, I move too quickly to think about exposure settings and find that the main subject (in this case, a cardinal standing in a nature center parking lot) on some of the pictures was just slightly out of focus. If this were a case of a narrow DoF because of a wide aperture, like in a portrait where a person's nose is in focus but their ears are not, I would not be complaining. On some of the quick shots, I cannot tell what the camera's sensors was doing and I know I put the focus point on the target.
Has anyone else had this problem? Is it solved by turning on the focusing light on the camera body (I normally leave it off because I think my hand gets in the way). Is it solved by using a higher focus point setting (the camera has 39 of them). Or do I have a calibration issue or simply a dirty lens?
Oh, also, in the Nikon VX software that came with the camera, there is a setting that shows the focus point in the picture. I've been using Lightroom lately, abandoning the free software for something with a little more oomph. It just occurred to me that I could look at the photo in the free program and see if it can tell me where the focus point is.
Thanks in advance for your suggestions.
Colby
Now I'm back in the advanced hobbyist mindset and I have just returned from a short trip where some of the pictures I took are slightly out of focus.
I typically shoot in single point AF mode and control most focusing with depth of field (stopping down if I want more in focus than just my main subject).
Sometimes, however, I move too quickly to think about exposure settings and find that the main subject (in this case, a cardinal standing in a nature center parking lot) on some of the pictures was just slightly out of focus. If this were a case of a narrow DoF because of a wide aperture, like in a portrait where a person's nose is in focus but their ears are not, I would not be complaining. On some of the quick shots, I cannot tell what the camera's sensors was doing and I know I put the focus point on the target.
Has anyone else had this problem? Is it solved by turning on the focusing light on the camera body (I normally leave it off because I think my hand gets in the way). Is it solved by using a higher focus point setting (the camera has 39 of them). Or do I have a calibration issue or simply a dirty lens?
Oh, also, in the Nikon VX software that came with the camera, there is a setting that shows the focus point in the picture. I've been using Lightroom lately, abandoning the free software for something with a little more oomph. It just occurred to me that I could look at the photo in the free program and see if it can tell me where the focus point is.
Thanks in advance for your suggestions.
Colby