Canon 50mm 1.4 focus issues

ClaudiaC wrote:

Hello Bill! Thank you for all those questions, I do understand the need of those and I am sorry for not providing more information. So my answers are the following:

- What camera body do you use? Canon 5D MKII

- What mode do you shoot in? AV

- What AF mode do you use? Auto-Focus

- Do you select a focus point, or do you let the camera choose for you? I always shoot with the central focus point and recompose with the use of the AF-ON back button.

As the other poster pointed out, this can be an inaccurate method. With f1.4 you have shallow depth, so be turning/rotating your main subject is easily out of focus. I do notice that your sample seems to be shot at f4, so it should be less of an issue. However, 1/60 shutter speed with a 50mm lens is close to hand-held limit. If you are not careful, you easily can have a little camera shake.

It is perhaps best to make sure that your lens does perform correctly by putting it on a tripod and shooting something like a newpaper on the wall in good light. There is also a battery test you can perform to see if you have front or back focus (which can be corrected with your body).

- Do you put the focus point on a high-contrast edge? Or do you just point the camera in the general direction of what you are trying to photograph? I'm not sure I understand this topic here... Can you be more specific?

- Do you focus first, then shoot? Or do you just press the button? I use the halfway shutter to focus, sometimes what I actually want in focus is in the middle, so I don't recompose using the back-button, sometimes I do, so I use the back-button to lock focus and recompose.

And I think that is all, let me know if I need to answer something else other than this, please!

Thank you!