I may be misunderstanding your problem, but have you tried using the
spot focus function instead of the Select-1, locking the focus on your
main subject and re-composing as necessary? I don't use any of the
multiple focus point or Select modes unless I'm shooting sports with
AF-C. If you're shooting a lot of movement you might try using one of
the Expanded Area modes, but they only work using AF-C
-p
On 12/2/2019 5:40 PM, Larry Colen wrote:
About a week ago we went to the Dickens Christmas Fair at the Cow Palace (Daly
City, very close to Brisbane). In theory, the 35/1.4 would be an ideal lens
for photographing dancing in crowded, low-light conditions. I seem to keep
running into the opposite of the vocalists microphone problem. Rather than
focusing on some random object in the foreground, I keep getting all of these
photos that are perfectly focused on the wall, 10, 20 or 30 feet behind the
people that I’m trying to photograph. My guess is that it is not a problem with
the lens, but with geometry. The wider angle lens has so much more background
in the frame, the camera has more opportunities to focus on the sharp edge in
the background.
The last time I ran into this I was using my standard select-1 autofocus mode,
this time I tried using select-9 in the hopes that it would select the object
in the foreground. It didn’t work. I don’t know if it would work better using
AF-C rather than AF-S, if it has a different algorithm to select the moving
object in the foreground. I do wish that just like there are different auto
exposure modes, there were different auto-focus modes, i.e. select the the
object a little further back so that you get the vocalist rather than the mic,
select the object closer so that you get the person rather than the wall behind
them, or only try to focus on objects near infinity so that when you’re trying
to photograph a bird it doesn’t rack the autofocus all of the way to the
closest and back out while the bird flies out of the frame.
I did try checking out my previews, but on such a small screen, everything
looked like it was in focus. Another feature I would love would be similar to
the blinkies that show clipping, have the focus peaking edge detection active
on preview so I can easily see in the preview what the camera focused on.
In any case, Dickens Fair can be a fun outing, and does provide some fun
photographic opportunities (even if they don’t allow you to take photos at the
naughty French Postcards show), and I do recommend it for folks in the Bay Area
between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/ellarsee/albums/72157712035774796
--
Larry Colen
[email protected]
--
Paul Sorenson
Studio1941
Sooner or later "different" scares people.
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