My eyes are acting up today-sometimes the focus looks good, sometimes not so good C&C

[JBW]

[Shadowman]

Brian,

Where did you have your camera focused? exif data would be helpful.

[Shadowman]

Brian,

Where did you have your camera focused? exif data would be helpful.

[Geoff F]

It seems that nothing is sharply focused here, although not far out.

And the main subject does appear to merge into the background. Possibly a slight crop, particularly from the top, would help to isolate the subject a little better.

[JBW]

Brian,

Where did you have your camera focused? exif data would be helpful.

how do I include exif data?

[Shadowman]

how do I include exif data?

Brian,

You can just post within your message. Usually the data gets stripped. I was able to retrieve it from your file.

4.3mm, f/3.1, 1/28 sec.,ISO 100, 0 exposure bias.

Do you remember where within the photo you were focusing and how close to your subject were you?

[JBW]

Brian,

You can just post within your message. Usually the data gets stripped. I was able to retrieve it from your file.

4.3mm, f/3.1, 1/28 sec.,ISO 100, 0 exposure bias.

Do you remember where within the photo you were focusing and how close to your subject were you?

I was 'trying' to focus on head area. Distance would have been within 5cm.

[JBW]

It seems that nothing is sharply focused here, although not far out.

And the main subject does appear to merge into the background. Possibly a slight crop, particularly from the top, would help to isolate the subject a little better.

The main subject is trying really hard to blend in. I tighter crop might help.

[Shadowman]

I was 'trying' to focus on head area. Distance would have been within 5cm.

Did your camera's focus indicator show that the shot was in focus and remain indicating after the shot was taken? I used a bridge camera, Nikon P90 with same settings as you and I couldn't get the camera to autofocus at 5cm.

[Shadowman]

Did your camera's focus indicator show that the shot was in focus and remain indicating after the shot was taken? I used a bridge camera, Nikon P90 with same settings as you and I couldn't get the camera to autofocus at 5cm.

Here's the shot I made using manual focus, which is a bear to use on the P90. Image heavily post processed. The camera was braced on a semi flat surface, lighting was terrible also. I won't get a chance to try this in daylight for another two days.

[Manfred M]

Let's see... 5cm from the subject shot at f/3.5 at 1/28 sec. My suspicion is that this would appear to be the reason for the lack of clarity in the image.

[JBW]

Let's see... 5cm from the subject shot at f/3.5 at 1/28 sec. My suspicion is that this would appear to be the reason for the lack of clarity in the image.

Here is a shot from the same shoot. part of the problem may be that I was in effect shooting into a 'cave'? I may also have over cropped.

[Manfred M]

Brian - it looks like a combination of a bit of camera shake, focus and DoF issue. Shooting into a "cave" should not be an issue per se.

I don't find that they whole image is particularly sharp; but the background is sharper than the foreground. At the very least you missed focusing on the subject. You shot wide open, which means your DoF is fairly limited, so hitting your focus is critical.

At 1/28 sec, you are certainly in a shutter speed range where a small amount of camera shake will show up as a blurred image. I think all of these things likely consipired against a sharp image. I don't know your camera specifically nor your focus mode or how you supported your camera, so a lot of this is guess work.

[Shadowman]

Brian - it looks like a combination of a bit of camera shake, focus and DoF issue. Shooting into a "cave" should not be an issue per se.

I don't find that they whole image is particularly sharp; but the background is sharper than the foreground. At the very least you missed focusing on the subject. You shot wide open, which means your DoF is fairly limited, so hitting your focus is critical.

At 1/28 sec, you are certainly in a shutter speed range where a small amount of camera shake will show up as a blurred image. I think all of these things likely consipired against a sharp image. I don't know your camera specifically nor your focus mode or how you supported your camera, so a lot of this is guess work.

Brian has the Fujifilm S4200 and according to its specification it should be able to focus at 2cm.

[Shadowman]

Brian,

One more question, do you have the camera set to macro mode? You'll likely lose some flexibility in changing settings but according to the specifications you should be able to focus even clser than 2cm.

[jcuknz]

I am convinced and willing to be proved wrong (EDIT which I am able to do by reading both my own FZ50 manual and the on-line s4200 one ... see further comments ) but having this camera in macro mode makes little or no difference to focus, only the speed at which AF finds focus. It saves AF hunting through long distances for a focus and it goes straight to the short range of its step motor. I have a feature which seems like Brian's on my bridge camera [FZ50]

When conditions conspire against us it is worthwhile experimenting in selecting the subject looselywith a good feather and inverting the selection and then blurring the surroundings/background. The fact that the surrounds are soft helps to give the impression that the subject is sharp, then invert the selection to just the subject and apply sharpening ... I discovered that in PPing a shot of a small bird hand held from the car with about a 2300mm equivalent AoV in low light, early morning.
+
Taken with my FZ50 the file number tells me.

EDIT ... It does make a difference with my FZ50 and the s4200 to use both Macro and super macro. but while Brian told us in Super macro he had to work on wide angle of else he got the 'fuzzies' it appear when in Macro mode there is a focusing range between 7cm and 3 metres. So that gives him the opportunity to stay back for greater DoF with some cropping.

The interesting aspect is when at full telephoto zoom the camera will only focus [ in Macro ] between 2 metres and 3 meters which suggests if you only partly use the zoom you could focus somewhere beteen 2m and 7cm and the result might be the tight framing required but from a more comfortable distance [ for subject and Brian ]

Since I find using the 2 second delay very unsatisfactory [ a personal reaction ] a further suggestion is to use the 'six frame' continuous mode [ black box with small one on top and thin lines beside it bottom right ]. This will take six frames at 1.2per second, over a period of five seconds with the probability that other than the first frame they will be steadier and sharper ... fingers crossed
The s4200 manual gives no focus range for telephoto in super macro miode so I guess the camera is stuck with fuzzies except at wide angle as Brian told us earlier.

Hope this info helps Brian.

Manual in case you don't have a hard copy
http://www.fujifilm.com/support/digi..._manual_en.pdf