Focus and Recompose - Better Photos... Now!

In photography, focus is everything.  If your exposure isn't perfect you can usually still get a good image with a little work in post processing.  If your composition isn't perfect you can usually crop to get a better composition.  Unfortunately, if your focus is off there is no way to fix it after an image is taken.  While there is always a time and place for out of focus images, it's something that you want to have total control over.

When using apertures that give you a very shallow depth of field, your focus is even more important.  If you're photographing a person's face, having an out of focus eye but an in focus nose can be enough to ruin an image.  So, how do you get the composition how you want it with the focus where you want it?  Focus and recompose!

If you've been following my recommendations so far, you're probably using spot focusing.  If you're not using spot focusing, you can safely ignore this blog post since you don't have complete control over what your camera chooses to focus on.  If you're using spot focusing, here's how to take your focusing to the next level.

Regardless of which focus point you choose to use, you'll occasionally come across a situation where your composition doesn't quite match your focus point and your camera has trouble focusing.  When this happens, the solution is simple.  Compose your image so that your camera focus on the proper part of the scene and then recompose your image.  As long as you're not really close to your subject and are not shooting with a super-shallow depth of field, the part of your image you originally focused on should still be in focus in your new composition.

This is also a trick that you can use if your camera isn't locking focus on an object that is a solid color.  Because auto focus systems rely on contrast to focus, a solid color can make focusing impossible for your camera.  If this is the case, focus on the edge of the object, recompose and take your photo!

You might notice here that the bottom image is a little sharper than the top image.  Not a huge difference, right?

In these tight crops of the same photos you can really see a difference.  Notice in the top photo that the point of
focus is on her earrings, not her eyes.  At these distances you need precise control over your focus.

The above two photos were literally taken 3 seconds apart.  Shooting at this distance at f/2.8 I lock my focus and recompose after every shot.  It can make the difference between a keeper and a reject.

Read all of my DSLR tips here.