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Thoughts appreciated on my D7000 focusing mistakes.

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Craig49

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Hi folks;

In line are 3 pictures from a recent parade.

In Capture NX2 only one of them will show a focus point and the pic clearly is focused behind it. Another one is soft and shows no focus point with apparent focus behind the main subject. And the third is sharp (I think :) ) but also with no focus point showing.

I'm guessing that I must have shot the two of them without the camera achieving focus, though one of them is excellent. The one that isn't focused on the displayed focus point is likely a victim of the focus sensor being larger than the square displayed?

I have the camera set for release on shutter and would appreciate any tips for doing this better, i.e. getting focus achieved at shutter release on moving subjects.

It also seems to me that this may be the source of some peoples focus problems?

Thanks a bunch for any tips or thoughts.













Craig
 
And now that I've posted, it occurs to me that the answer may be that I need to pause for just an instant at the half-pressed position, and perhaps I didn't. Hmmm.
 
1st pic is all in focus except car and girls...motion blur
2nd pic is all good...you fluked it :)
3rd pic..same as 1st.

when shooting moving objects, be they cars, bikes, humans etc etc you need to have a fast shutter speed, here i think they would be at a crawling speed so panning would not be a major issue...your ISO 160,140,200 is too low, because your shutter speed is 1/500sec, could have upped the ISO to 800 to get a decent shutter speed....were you shooting in full auto or shutter mode?

set your camera in aperture mode, say f5.. then AF-C, then set shooting mode to CH (machine gun), use the AE-L button as the focus button and hold while firing away and moving with the subject...check your shutter speed by upping the ISO...you should get decent pics.
 
Hmmm. Thanks.

The car wasn't moving very fast. It never occurred to me to think I might need the shutter much faster.

What would you consider a more reasonable shutter speed for this type of thing?
 
im guessing 1/1000 would be sufficient

with the pic below, my ISO was at 200 because it was a bright day, but my shutter speed was 1/1600sec...see how at that speed it froze the spokes on the bikes...these guys were doing 60-70 kmh, so i was moving the camera left to right fast....just go and practice where a lot of cars drive past...say a main road.. and get the hang of it.


Craig49 said:
Hmmm. Thanks.

The car wasn't moving very fast. It never occurred to me to think I might need the shutter much faster.

What would you consider a more reasonable shutter speed for this type of thing?
Click to expand...
 
I set my camera shutter on Focus I think the second one is nicely focused but I think it couls do with the brightness knocked down a little, I did this in NX2 but a tad too much



 
I agree with you!

I just haven't done anything else with the pics yet. Thanks.
 
...are you sure, have you had a look at the histogram, its underexposed.
rpps said:
I set my camera shutter on Focus I think the second one is nicely focused but I think it couls do with the brightness knocked down a little, I did this in NX2 but a tad too much
Click to expand...
 
Looking at the focus in VNX2, you simply missed focus and didn't give AF-C time to grab the girls. The AF-Sensor is larger, by at least a third, than the focus box in the view finder indicates. (much larger than the box in CNX2. Practice and you'll get it. Just a learning curve thing here IMO Good Luck
 
I've been observing very similar results with my D7000, repeatably, even with completely static subjects. It's not you. It's not motion blur. There is something not quite right with our particular cameras.... almost like it has a problem locking in on human subjects. I will be sending mine in for adjustment when I find the time.

(I am not a newbie. I know how to use a DSLR and what it should do.)
--
sg
 
I've had similar issues with my D7000. I find it helps if I keep an eye on which focus point the camera has selected. If I see one light up on the background then I recompose. Best of luck.
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I just watched an episode of FroKnowsPhoto (show 007) where they took a couple of D7000s on the road.

Jared Polin stated that he did have a hard time getting focus with it. But, he also said its a very good camera overall.

The 21:00 minute mark in this video...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Q9yAM9CRpI
 
intruder61 said:
1st pic is all in focus except car and girls...motion blur
2nd pic is all good...you fluked it :)
3rd pic..same as 1st.
Click to expand...
I usually don't call people out for their posts, but I'll make an exception here. You are totally wrong about the fuzziness being motion blurring. It is clearly a focus issue where the camera focused on the house behind the car and not the ladies sitting in the car.

According to your logic, the house must have been moving fast because the house is blurry in the second picture while the car is in focus. If the car is blurry due to motion movement in the 1st and 3rd picture, then the house must have been moving in the 2nd picture to cause the blurriness. It couldn't be DOF or anything like that or your logic is flawed.
 
It may have been an attempt to focus on one of the girls faces and the AF sensor grabbed onto the house or trees instead. I've found this type of thing to happen far more with my D7000 compared to the ancient, but reliable, D100 I've traded up from. I certainly don't think you'd need a shutter speed faster than 1/500 for a slow moving parade car.

Just as a hypothetical I'd have used AF-C paired with 9 point dynamic and if those people are someone I know, CH mode. Otherwise, if it's just a parade of people I don't know and I'm just out having fun I almost always stay in single shot mode.
 
Since you have your camera set to release on shutter, it will take a picture even if the camera has not yet achieved focus. Setting release on focus (focus priority).

Also, if you are not using single point focus, it may grab something other than the subject you want to focus on.

The first and third shots were not motion blur as some people have stated. The people in the background of the photo are in focus instead of the girls in the car.
 
Why not use single p[oint AF-S for such shots and set it on the main subject? I've never had with D80 or D7k a missed focused shot that way. If you are shooting at high fps, then ok, use AF-C, but that needs some practice.
--
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Good shooting and good luck
(after Ed Murrow)
 
You are correct in your own evaluation, and I think this is a common issue with the D7000.

In settings a2 and a3 you can set the D7000 to either release of focus priority in AF-C and AF-S.
AF-C default is Release and AF-S default is Focus.
AF-A chooses automatically between AF-C and AF-S.

So shooting in AF-C or AF-A (when the camera has detected movement and chosen Af-F-C), the camera will take the shot focus locked or not. Hence a lot of photos posted of nicely infocus backgrounds.

Nikons lower end cameras are set up by default to be FOCUS priority and will NOT take a photo unless focus has been acheived.

Darin
 
Tianium said:
You are correct in your own evaluation, and I think this is a common issue with the D7000.

In settings a2 and a3 you can set the D7000 to either release of focus priority in AF-C and AF-S.
AF-C default is Release and AF-S default is Focus.
AF-A chooses automatically between AF-C and AF-S.

So shooting in AF-C or AF-A (when the camera has detected movement and chosen Af-F-C), the camera will take the shot focus locked or not. Hence a lot of photos posted of nicely infocus backgrounds.

Nikons lower end cameras are set up by default to be FOCUS priority and will NOT take a photo unless focus has been acheived.
Click to expand...
+1.
OP: your hint should be, exactly as you said, nx2 wouldn't show the focus point.
 
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