Nikon D5300 AF Focus Points Question

colbyseider · Jul 29, 2015

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

SkaGoat · Jul 29, 2015

What shutter speed were you using in the photo in question?

Can you post the photo so we can take a look and see if it's indeed missed focus?

Is it possible it's actually motion blur from having too slow of a shutter speed?

OKW Lover · Jul 29, 2015

I'm following this discussion because I've got the same camera. I've got mine set to use all the focus points, if that matters.

colbyseider · Jul 29, 2015

Ok, so here's a first for me, sharing a photo:

Just in case the EXIM data does not convey:
ISO 200
300 MM (on a 55-300 MM Zoom)
f/5.6
1/160 sec

@OKW Lover, when I started with this camera, I was switching between all points and single point focus and found more control with the single point mode. I was finding that if there were too many objects at varying distances, the object I wanted in focus would not wind up in focus.

This is still a new camera to me even though I've had it for over a year.

[Edit] OK, so I guess I cannot link to a photo, it seems I have not posted enough for the privilege.

mom2rtk · Jul 29, 2015

Can't see the photo. But your shutter speed seems on the slow side. Generally they recommend the inverse of your focal length as a minimum. So for your 300mm length, you would want at least 1/300.

havoc315 · Jul 29, 2015

You can use flickr or photobucket, etc, to post the photo.

There are many many reasons why the image could appear soft or out of focus.

Right away, I can say that at 300mm, 1/160 is a slow shutter speed. So it might just be camera shake. Even with VR on, I wouldn't expect 100% sharp images at 1/160 and 300mm.

Secondly, are you in AF-S or AF-C? If you are in AF-S, was there motion between the focus acquisition and the image capture? If AF-C, did you move the camera at all off your subject, causing it to change the focus point? Regardless, how steady was your technique?

Thirdly, back focus and front focus are issues with many lenses, that can't be corrected on entry and mid level cameras. It's become more noticeable as resolution has moved upward.

Fourth... As resolution has increased, little flaws become more perceptible than they used to be. Pixel peeping brings out missed-focus that you never would have noticed in film or earlier digital.

havoc315 · Jul 29, 2015

mom2rtk said:
Can't see the photo. But your shutter speed seems on the slow side. Generally they recommend the inverse of your focal length as a minimum. So for your 300mm length, you would want at least 1/300.

Actually, it's 1/effective focal length.... So it's 300mm on a crop body... 450mm effective... 1/450 would be recommended, making 1/160 very slow.

dmaxphil · Jul 29, 2015

This is a VR lens. You should be able to get at least a couple of stops of stabilization if VR was on - or if VR for this lens is effective. Its possible this lens is just soft at 300mm. Try backing down to 200-250 to see if the image sharpens up. Increase shutter speed to take camera shake out of the equation.

elmoandzoey · Jul 30, 2015

Even with VR I find 1/160 to be a bit on the slow side. I think it depends on the OP if he can hold the camera still at 300mm or not at all, even with a fast shutter speed. I know I can keep it steady to a relatively slow shutter speed. Give the same setup to my DH and he'd have a problem keeping it still even with 1/450.

havoc315 · Jul 30, 2015

elmoandzoey said:
Even with VR I find 1/160 to be a bit on the slow side. I think it depends on the OP if he can hold the camera still at 300mm or not at all, even with a fast shutter speed. I know I can keep it steady to a relatively slow shutter speed. Give the same setup to my DH and he'd have a problem keeping it still even with 1/450.

Without stabilization, personally, I need a stop or more extra. So without stabilization, with 450mm, personally, I would need around 1/800-1/1000. It is with stabilization, that I can generally shoot 1/focal length and maybe a stop slower. (Depending on the quality of the stabilization, sometimes much better).

dmaxphil · Jul 30, 2015

Yep, lots depends on the person holding the camera. On this shot, I would have sacrificed ISO to go a bit faster. From what I just read, this lens is known to be soft at 300mm, so that could be a problem as well.

Geoff_M · Jul 30, 2015

I don't know about the D5300 in particular but, assuming that you're shooting JPEGs instead of RAW, Nikon is notoriously conservative when it comes to its default in-camera sharpening settings. It's very common for people to bump the default sharpening setting up a couple of notches to produce better results. The settings normally can range from a value of 0 to 9, and Nikon usually sets the default to 3. The D7000 was famous for "soft" JPEG images out of the box with the default sharpening. I've normally move the setting up to 6, and in the case of my D7000 I use 7.

Nikon's philosophy seems to be to defer things to the sharpening tools in post-processing software like Photoshop or Lightroom that are much more powerful then the "one size fits all" blanket sharpening that's applied in-camera.

jec6613 · Jul 30, 2015

There's a lot going on that's stacking to lower your sharpness. Looking at the photo you linked, it looks like you missed the focus a bit, it's about 2-3 inches behind the bird, and then you have a low shutter speed and you should be at 1/500 or higher, 1/160 is really pushing the VR system (it's 1/focal length for 35 mm equivalent, so you're at 450 mm equivalent so 1/500). Then you also seem to have caught a movement of the VR element that's reducing sharpness a bit, turning VR off and using higher shutter speeds would fix this. Oh, and your lens is weakest at 300 mm, and shoots best stopped down a stop or two, so that's not doing you any favors, either.

ISO 1600, f/6.3 and 1/500 with VR off would have given you sharper results, and you can fix the noise in post if it's objectionable. As for the AF miss ... you could have a slight calibration issue, and you could also have a moving subject and be in the wrong AF mode. For this, AF-C using back button AF and dynamic 9 point AF would be my choices.

havoc315 · Jul 31, 2015

Ahh, ok, I saw the image.....
Really, you simply missed focus by an inch or 2. Looks to be as simple as that.
One should never expect to nail perfect tack sharp focus on 100% of shots.. neither the camera nor the photographer is that perfect. That's why I try to fire off a few consecutive shots of a more difficult subject, or critical pictures.

Among the reasons you could have missed focus:
1 -- Lens is back focusing. This is the issue if you are consistently getting focus slightly behind your subject, whenever you use that lens.
2 -- The focus point wasn't actually on the bird, or only partially on the bird, and the point was actually behind it.
3 -- If you locked focus with AF-S, half-shutter, and then fully pressed... You could have moved slightly.. If your body swayed forward an inch as you took the picture, you'd be focused an inch behind your subject.
4 -- In AF-C, just like above, you could have moved a bit while taking the image, which could have moved the focus point, and caused the camera to re-focus.
5 -- The bird could have moved as you were taking the shot, inched forward.

It does not appear to be motion blur/camera shake, even though 1/160 is slow. It does not appear to be lens softness, though that may contribute. It does appear to be simply a case of missed focus. Increasing your DOF does not really increase your "focus." It just increases the area of perceived sharpness. When you pixel peep, you can still usually see a slight difference between the plane of focus and the rest. You won't generally get that super tack sharp appearance except at the focal point.

dmaxphil · Jul 31, 2015

This thread got me to thinking about how much I rely on image stabilization. Here are a couple of shots I never would have got without VR. Both were shot at 400mm.

400mm ISO 1250 1/125s f/8

400mm ISO 1250 1/160s f/5.6

photo_chick · Aug 1, 2015

Something else to consider... depth of field is not the area that is in focus. It's the area of acceptable sharpness. There is only one plane of focus and if you look closely at some images (depending on subject) things can easily look out of focus even when they're considered to be well within the depth of field. Without seeing the image, it's difficult to tell though.

If you truly suspect a problem google Bob Atkins's focus test and do it. A proper focus test is the first step in determining if there really is an issue with your lens or not.

photo_chick · Aug 1, 2015

havoc315 said:
Actually, it's 1/effective focal length.... So it's 300mm on a crop body... 450mm effective... 1/450 would be recommended, making 1/160 very slow.

Actually this is still pretty heavily debated. Many feel that it is 1/actual focal length since the crop sensor is just "cropping in". At any rate, it's also just a guideline and it never hurts to err on the side of caution and bump that shutter speed up faster when possible.

jec6613 · Aug 1, 2015

photo_chick said:
Actually this is still pretty heavily debated. Many feel that it is 1/actual focal length since the crop sensor is just "cropping in". At any rate, it's also just a guideline and it never hurts to err on the side of caution and bump that shutter speed up faster when possible.

It's died down in recent years since CIPA came up with an IS/VR testing standard and there is at least some measure of objective data, and also with m43 and even Nikon CX entering the fray and exaggerating the differences caused by sensor size.

It's also not helped that if I've had nine cups of coffee I need to be at 1/1000 for a 200 mm lens, while my uncaffeinated self can be at 1/50; or that each person's definition of acceptable camera shake is slightly different, with some people hand-holding landscape shots while others are on carbon fiber tripods with ball head the size of a grapefruit and a sack of bricks slung underneath, and not extending the legs at all, and still seem to get camera shake somehow, and are wishing they could haul an anvil with a vise into the woods with them (ignoring the fact that by this point they could have lugged an 8x10 view camera and wooden tripod).

havoc315 · Aug 1, 2015

photo_chick said:
Actually this is still pretty heavily debated. Many feel that it is 1/actual focal length since the crop sensor is just "cropping in". At any rate, it's also just a guideline and it never hurts to err on the side of caution and bump that shutter speed up faster when possible.

Yes, but by cropping in, you are magnifying each little tremor.

For example, my son has the Nikon J3. I have adapted lenses onto it. When adapting a 300mm lens, it becomes equivalent to 900 or so. I have no problem handholding 300, but I cannot physically handhold it when adapted.

colbyseider · Aug 2, 2015

All,

I apologize for my lack of interaction. Life gets in the way sometimes.

I'd like to thank you for your great suggestions all of which are true and will get corrected over time. The best of which will require me to check out the different auto focus settings: AF-S vs AF-C. Obviously I've got something that's not working and it's photographer error.

I wasn't sure if the photo linked properly from the Google Photo but it seems some of you were able to view it. For others, here's a link to my photobucket album:

I appreciate everyone's contribution.

Keep making pictures!

Colby

Nikon D5300 AF Focus Points Question

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