New to photography, please help!

[Chelseafan07]

Hello everyone!
I am very new to photography (about 1 month) and I need help with one problem im encountering. I love portrait photography and love using my canon 50mm lens for background blur, the problem I have is I seem to have blur on the face as well. Idealy I want background blur and a nice clean in focus shot of the whole face, why isnt this happening?
I do feel quite thick asking this question but I really dont know what im doing wrong.
Any information would be greatly received, and please feel free to call me "thicko"
Many thanks
Maz

[Troy]

Hey Maz,

Welcome along.

Well i'm going to go out on a limb here and assume you're shooting at F1.8 or up to F3-ish.

At such wide apertures the depth of field (amount of the shot in focus) is very very narrow. So you should be focusing on the nearest eye, but at f1.8 even the second eye and the rest of the face will likely be out of focus. Try bumping up your aperture to around f5 or higher, depending on the angle of the shot and you'll see an improvement. If you want to learn more about this depth of field, just take a simple subject like a pen, place it on a table and take a shot of it with each aperture. At f1.8 you'll find only the pen is in focus, but at something like f22, absolutely everything is in focus.

If you ask me, as long as the nearest eye is in focus i don't think it matters too much about the rest of the face, but it's personal preference i guess.

[Chris Humphreys]

Apertures are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to depth of field as it also depends on focal length, camera to subject distance, subject to background distance, plane of focus etc.

Your lack of sharp shots could also be down to camera shake. You need to eliminate that possibility first of all. Assuming you're using something like a 50mm f1.4 and you're indoors, you should shoot at a shutter speed of at least 1/100th second, preferably a tad faster. This may mean bumping up the ISO. Once you're sure you aren't suffering from camera shake then you need to make sure you subject is staying put. If it's children then your luck is out! Keep shooting until you get lucky.

As Troy says, focus on the near eye and you should get there. Shallow depth of field shooting looks great when done well, but it takes practice to perfect.

[Chelseafan07]

Thank you both so much for your help. I really dont have a clue what i`m doing but im not going to let it put me off!
Will be trying out this advice at the weekend and hopefully that will be one problem out of the way!
Im a real novice so i`m sure I will be back with lots of more silly questions
Many thanks again to you both
Maz xx

[patrickwilson86]

Be sure to exhaust the free stuff before you plunk down any cash.

http://learn.usa.canon.com/

http://www.photographytalk.com/photogra ... hotography

http://www.nikonusa.com/Learn-And-Explo ... index.page


among others.

[Gerard]

If you will not manage with this lens then I'm recommending you to get some additional gear (lenses). There will be no problem to do a "wash-off"(i call it this way) with tele lens or 24-105mm. That's my experience.

[Matt Bennett]

I'd certainly say that if you are new to photography you are best off using medium apertures. Wide apertures like f1.4, f1.8, f2, f2.8 etc are liable to produce very shallow depth of field - this places bigger demands on your focusing technique and composition skills.

Narrow apertures like f16 and f22 will give much broader depth of field but they force you to use slower shutter speeds and/or higher ISO settings.

So, when you are new to photography, set your camera's exposure mode to A or Av (Aperture Priority) and ensure that you are working with an aperture of around f5.6 to f11.

This should reduce focusing problems and the need for slow shutter speeds.

[marymagnuson]

i also want to know how to capture photographs with portrait view... someone plz explain it in detail....

[Abigail1]

This might be happening due to the illumination problem. Using the low dimensional model for illumination variations, we show that the set of all images obtained from a face image by blurring it and by changing the illumination conditions forms a bi-convex set.

[kendrikwiley]

If you are facing some problem because of illumination or blur then there are many ways where you can come out from it.There are many things that you should have to be consider in your mind.