Focus on two birds

[William Dickson]

Canon 7D, Sigma 150-500, shot at 500mm
1/1000 F 6.3 AV mode ISO 400

I was wanting to get both birds in this photograph, which i did capture.

Where is the best place to focus to get both birds in focus.

I focused on the bird on the left hand side, the male sparrow, but I can see that the other bird is slightly soft.

Should I have focused in the middle of the birds with a different aperture setting?

The photograph is cropped slightly. Thanks in advance.



[IMG][/IMG]

[Ian Cassell]

Hi William. At 500mm, your DOF is very shallow. Your DOF depends also on your distance to target. How far away from the birds were you?

Here is an online DOF calculator that may be helpful. http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html

[Diane Miller]

With a small subject like a songbird, you have so much magnification that the DOF is very small. The DOF calculators usually show considerably more than what I consider acceptable.

You can try a focus point in between the two subjects but then it's likely neither will be tack sharp. The best bet is to focus on one, shoot, quickly change focus to the other and shoot again, and if they and the camera haven't moved you can combine the two images in PS.

I'm rushing off to another dinner with family -- I'll try to remove your duplicate post tomorrow.

[William Dickson]

Hi William. At 500mm, your DOF is very shallow. Your DOF depends also on your distance to target. How far away from the birds were you?

Here is an online DOF calculator that may be helpful. http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html

Hi Ian, I was quite close to the birds probably about 40 feet, I should maybe have reduced my lens to 300 or 400 at that distance, and maybe have gotten a sharper picture, I have read that the Sigma 150-500 can be soft at 500mm The camera was handheld, what do you think of the sharpness?

[Ian Cassell]

William, I don't think it's an issue with the lens being soft or your handholding. I think it's a matter of the very shallow DOF at 500mm. Others can correct me if I'm wrong here.

[Diane Miller]

At this magnification, it's likely everything -- tiny amounts of camera shake or subject movement, shallow DOF, AF calibration possibly being slightly off, lens softness, and the phase of the moon.

As to your sharpness question, the bird on the left looks sharper but it's the one on the right that is more prominent and more parallel to the sensor -- that's the one I would have focused on (on the eye) and let the other one be a secondary subject. Hard to say if it's tack sharp on the JPEG here -- you can assess that with a 100% view of the full file on PS or LR or whatever you use.