On Mon, Jun 6, 2011 at 8:40 AM, Eric Weir <[email protected]> wrote:
> I remain frustrated at my inability to get well-focused shots. Saturday I was > out exploring neighborhoods around the community in which I work and had my > camera along. I came across an adult pickup soccer game on one of the school > playing fields. I stopped and sat in the shade with a group guys who were > taking a break from the game. Then I went out of the field and shot about a > 100 images. > > I was looking forward to seeing the result. It was sunny mid-morning. The > camera's a *ist DS. The lens was an M 135/3.5. ISO was 200. Aperture was > mostly around f11. About half the images were shot at 1/250, half at 1/180. I > kept focus set at infinity. > > I thought surely, at that speed, with that focus, at the distance at which I > was shooting I'd get a few sharp well-composed images. A handful -- less than > five -- are so-so, but not really sharp. The rest are all fuzzy. According to the Online Depth of Field Calculator(*), if your lens is set to infinity focus & f/11, the near edge of the depth of field is about 264 feet away. That's most of a football field; it doesn't surprise me that many of your photos are not sharp. If you instead focused the lens at the hyperfocal distance (the same 264 feet for f/11), the depth of field would extend from 132 feet to infinity, so that would be better, but still maybe not good enough, and depending on the focus scale markings, it might be hard to set the lens to that focus distance precisely, anyway. Also, for sports, 1/250 - 1/180 is a little slow. You might be seeing motion blur in the subjects, not just focus error. I'd probably go a little higher on the ISO, a little faster on the shutter speed, and consequently a larger (smaller number) aperture. I don't know much about soccer, but in many sports it helps to pre-focus on something (like a base, in baseball) and shoot when the action is there. Shooting sports with MF takes practice. (*) http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
