How Do You Obtain Sharp Eyes With 50mm Lens On Canon 400d Dslr?
Hiya, as above I never seem able to get sharp eyes in portraiture pics. Im currently using a canon 400D DSLR with a IS USM 1.4 lens. Eyes are always slightly blurred with perhaps cheeks being sharper. Is there anyway of changing the red dots to focus on eyes? Also, what should I do to obtain all over face sharpness?, Thanks in advance.
No related posts.
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
Both comments and pings are currently closed.
Posted in 
Tags: 
The camera does not know you’re trying to get the eyes in focus–it focuses .. almost randomly, and I suppose cheeks are bigger areas v.s. the eyes.
The depth of field is so shallow for that lens at f 1.4, so if you focus * manually * on the eyes, it should work better. Canon 100 mm f 2.8 Macro at wide open (Canon 5D)
You have to focus, lock the focus, and recompose.
So, use the focus indicators and put them on the person’s eyes. Focus by pushing the shutter release partway and holding the button in place after the camera focuses. Recompose the shot, and finish pushing the button the rest of the way.
You can increase the area in focus by increasing your depth of field by using a smaller lens aperture (like f/11 or f/13) which will make more area come into focus. If you’re shooting at f/1.4 all the time, that’s too shallow of an area in focus; try f/4 instead.
Anthony has made some good points.
If you shoot three stops down, you will be shooting at the lenses sharpest f/stop and you will have enough depth of field to keep the eyes, eyebrows, lips and cheeks in focus.
Put the camera on single focus, put the selected AF point over an eye, press the shutter halfway, recompose and shoot. (If you don’t know how to do the above, look in the user guide.)
To obtain more depth of field (more things in focus front-to-back) choose a smaller aperture (larger number).
Why are you taking portraits with a 50mm lens, take the lens off auto focus and manually focus its that easy