Focus

This picture was taken AF-ON AF-C 3D focus in Continuous High Mode. f5, 1/100s, ISO 100. It was taken in RAW format, and converted to JPEG using view NX2 with no PP. I would just like to see what you guys think of the focus of this picture. Attached below is the 100% crop. My lens for this one was the 24-70 f2.8. And as can be seen by the above picture, the subject forms a very tiny part of the image. And this might have hindered better focus than perhaps any lens with a longer focal length which might have gotten alot more of the horse in the frame and might thus have made it easier to focus better (because of more focus points being involved). Just a theory. Anyways what do you guys think?

Cropping does not take the place of having the proper focal length of lens. A lot is expected to crop this much and have a well focused image. The shutter speed is too slow for the action shot if you want a sharp image. Auto focus on any camera does not work as well for small distance subjects due to lack of precise focusing and also due to atmospheric conditons.

Larry

Agree with Larry. A shot like that @1/100 ss came out pretty good, IMO.

Yes I figured as much. I'm not too worried about the less than acceptable focus because I shoot mostly landscapes and architecture rather than sports or wildlife. Which is why I don't really feel the need to get a higher FL lens like the 70-200. This was a one-off event. Just thought I'd ask though.

I was surprised by the shutter speed as well. Anyways, a lesson learned for next time then. Thank you for the replies.

Considering the distance to subject and the shutter speed you used I think you did pretty well !

BTW, excellent shutter speed that blurred the horses feet a little.

Sharp focus on a moving subject requires the following:

1. A subject large enough relative to the focus sensor that a focus sensor can track it independent of the background. The large the subject is in the viewfinder, the better the focus sensors can track the whole subject or a particular part of the subject.
2. Decent contrast between subject and background
3. A shutter speed fast enough to stop undesired motion blur (what you need depends upon a lot of things such as subject speed, focal length, subject distance, angle of motion relative to camera, etc...). For reference, I shoot soccer players with a 200-400 at 1/800 or higher.
4. The appropriate AF settings for good tracking on your subject.
5. Continuous focus after acquiring focus on the right part of the subject.
6. Good, stable camera tracking technique on the desired focus sensor.

You could do better with #1 and #3. You were probably OK with #2, #4 and #5. I'm not sure how good you did with #6.

The speed of the horse diagonal to the camera is likely to be around 30 mph. Sharpness is decent on the harness down the front of the horse so autofocus has done its part of the job.

Different parts of the horse and rider being blurred by different amounts are because of different movement speeds in different directions. If you want everything sharp you need to use a faster shutter speed.

Thank you all for replying. I wish I could take credit for the selecting the shutter speed but this happened kind of quickly so i just switched to P mode. But I will definitely use this as a reference point in future and try it out in M mode. A longer focal length would obviously be helpful, but don't have anything longer than 70 at the moment. Thanks again.

Best regards.

Not a thing wrong with how the camera handled this, that's as good as it gets with that lens, speed and conditions. In fact it delivered a better image than I would have expected under those conditions.

glo