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Can't get my camera to focus

Mghnickell
Contributor
Hi y'all,. I'm new to photoboothing and I can't figure out what setting I put my Canon Rebel T5 on so that everyone stays in focus and don't come out blurry. Can someone please give me some pointers ?
22 REPLIES 22

diverhank
Authority

@Mghnickell wrote:
Hi y'all,. I'm new to photoboothing and I can't figure out what setting I put my Canon Rebel T5 on so that everyone stays in focus and don't come out blurry. Can someone please give me some pointers ?

What are your settings (Av, Tv and ISO) in the pictures that are blurry.  How far apart are the rows of people?  How far are you (your camera) from the people?  What focal length?

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Diverhank's photos on Flickr

Waddizzle
Legend
Legend

@Mghnickell wrote:
Hi y'all,. I'm new to photoboothing and I can't figure out what setting I put my Canon Rebel T5 on so that everyone stays in focus and don't come out blurry. Can someone please give me some pointers ?

Read the instruction manual.

Do a web search for " exposure triangle " , and " depth of field ".

Read the instruction manual again, because you should have gained a better perspective after learning about the above.

 

Find out why the following common reasons for not being able to focus, can cause the camera to not be able to focus.

 

  • Not enough light for the camera to focus.  Try enabling the "AF Assist Beam"
  • Not enough contrast under the AF point for the camera to focus.
  • Subject is too close to the camera.
  • Use of an extender raises the effective f/stop too high for the camera's AF system to focus.

 

There are more reasons, but those are some of the most common.

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"The right mouse button is your friend."

ScottyP
Authority

By "photoboothing " do you mean like at a wedding where people climb into a little booth with funny hats and make group selfies?

 

is the problem that no one in the group is in focus or that like one or two people are in focus but other people who are closer or farther from the camera are out of focus?  

 

As as mentioned you need to know the exposure triangle to understand the problem. It could be several different things including:

-too slow a shutter speed allowing the living moving subjects to show motion blur, or

-too large an aperture (too low an f/number) giving you too shallow a depth of field in focus so individuals closer or farther away even by inches, won't all be in focus, or

-not enough light for autofocus to work at all.

 

 

Scott

Canon 5d mk 4, Canon 6D, EF 70-200mm L f/2.8 IS mk2; EF 16-35 f/2.8 L mk. III; Sigma 35mm f/1.4 "Art" EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro; EF 85mm f/1.8; EF 1.4x extender mk. 3; EF 24-105 f/4 L; EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS; 3x Phottix Mitros+ speedlites

Why do so many people say "FER-tographer"? Do they take "fertographs"?

Mghnickell
Contributor
In answer to diverhank's first question , apparently I had it on landscape mode which I guess is an auto feature instead of manually setting my aperture, ISO and shutter speed. Should I manually set this info instead of relying on the camera to make the corrections for me? In answer to you second question,. The people that are in the photo booth either get right on top of the camera or they stand back but don't stand still. I was reading up on the "exposure triangle" last night and saw that tweeking your settings can correct for a little movement. Did I interpret that correctly? The focal length is approximately 4 feet so when they crowd camera it goes seriously out of focus


@Mghnickell wrote:
In answer to diverhank's first question , apparently I had it on landscape mode which I guess is an auto feature instead of manually setting my aperture, ISO and shutter speed. Should I manually set this info instead of relying on the camera to make the corrections for me? In answer to you second question,. The people that are in the photo booth either get right on top of the camera or they stand back but don't stand still. I was reading up on the "exposure triangle" last night and saw that tweeking your settings can correct for a little movement. Did I interpret that correctly? The focal length is approximately 4 feet so when they crowd camera it goes seriously out of focus

Thank you for the info.  Now I feel I have enough info to give you a half-way decent advice (maybe :)).

 

For a photobooth environment, you should definitely use a Manual setting and not leave it up to the camera system which can be easily fooled.

 

1. You should definitely use the Alien Bee...you just need to control it so the light output is not excessive (overexposing your picture).  This will give you plenty of light to work your settings which will solve lots of other problems.

 

2. Set the camera to M mode.

3. Set your ISO to some value.  For photobooth type quality, I'd set ISO to 800...This will give me flexibility in other two settings without harming the quality of the prints that much.  You can vary ISO to your liking, of course.

4. Your camera/lens combo has something called a Minimum Focus Distance so you have to control the environment so the people cannot get too close to the camera...otherwise everything will be blurred.  Best is to move the camera back enough behind a glass panel so people can stick their faces right up to the panel without being blurred.

5. I'd set the MF (manual focus) on the lens,manually focus to a spot a couple feet off the glass panel (where people will most likely be)  and set the aperture (Av) to something like f/8 or higher.  This way your depth of field will be ample no matter where people may end up with.

 

6. Set your shutter speed (Tv) to 1/200 or faster if your Alien Bee can do high speed sync.  This way people moving will not be as blurred.

 

7.  With my proposed setting, there is no way you can get away without using flash/strobe like the Alien Bee.  The key now is that once you manually set Av, Tv and ISO, the required amount of light is fixed.  You need to set the Alien Bee to manual and adjust the intensity until the faces are properly exposed.

 

8. If you have ambient light in the booth, you might want to set White Balance to degrees Kelvin.  Tweak it so the color looks the best.

 

8. Tweak the settings until things look perfect.  This is a lot easier than taking pictures of people mingling in a wedding...everything in a booth can be controlled.

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Diverhank's photos on Flickr

Im going to try all your suggestions and see what happens. The only thing I can't do is move the camera. It is actually installed in the photo booth cabinet. What I might end up doing is put maybe a velvet rope inside the booth to discourage people from getting to close. Hopefully that along with your suggests will clear up my issue. If it does, thanks so much for your input. If it doesn't hopefully ya'll wont mind helping me some more.

Mghnickell
Contributor
I saw where both ScottyP and Waddizzle mentioned not enough light as one of my problems. I have an alien bees strobe but when it goes off it lights the subjects up so much they look like they're glowing white . Due to that issue I have just turned it off and are using ambient light that seeping into the photo booth. Any suggestions?

A strobe won't help low light focus.

 

Which lends are you using?

 

What camera settings?

John Hoffman
Conway, NH

1D X Mark III, Many lenses, Pixma PRO-100, Pixma TR8620a, LR Classic

The lens is a Canon EFS 18-55 mm and it was set on an auto mode for landscape. Im going to try a manual setting and see if I can clear up my issue. I noticed there is an image stabilizer on the lens. Will that help?
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