Focusing issues canon 400D/tamron 17-50mm

buckley_1984 · 25-04-2008, 8:00 PM

Hello,

im hoping someone will be able to help. i'm fairly new to photography and have been taking loads of photos with my new camera. trouble is im falling at first hurdle because i cant get things in focus.

im using the auto focus and i was taking photos of my cat who was willing to pose. i took about six photos from exactly the same position with all the same settings. one came out in perfect focus, some were okay and the rest were terrible. whats going on? this has happened many times. am i doing something wrong, should i use auto focus or what else can i try.

any help appreciated

Chris

denno75uk · 25-04-2008, 8:32 PM

Don't want to patronise, so I'll try not to be

How are you using the AF? ie are you half depresing the shutter button and waiting for the beep/AF point flash to tell you it's focussed?
If so, it could instead be that your using the multi point AF and the camera is selecting different points to focus on. Try selecting just the centre point and try with that, then you know that your telling the camera to focus on a fixed point that you can reference with the shots.
If it's still not working....dunno.

buckley_1984 · 26-04-2008, 9:58 AM

i thought it might be the nine point auto focus screwing things up as well so i switched it to the centre one. another example is i was taking photos of a log. the auto focus point was out of focus but a few centemetres back was in focus. i tried it again on some other subjects and same thing happened that the area just behind the auto focus point was the area that was focused.

i dont know. maybe i'll start practising with manual focus. it would be a decent skill to have anyway.

denno75uk · 26-04-2008, 12:27 PM

I have read about lenses with front/back focussing issues so that could be the case here, I'm just too unsure how prevalent it is to suggest that it is likely here.
If it's doing it consistently though, may be worth trying to get someone to have a look.

jonnypb · 26-04-2008, 12:54 PM

does it do the same with a different lens on? if you haven't got one take it into somewhere like jessops and try taking some shots with a different lens on