I have taken quite a bit of time scouring the internet for the do's and don't of photography. All my images are RAW files and I shoot in Manual mode and use the auto focus mode (which I feel like is what the issue is)
ISO is 100 f/28 1/320 I think I was set at AL SERVO
I point the red dot on the face and then I open the files and some/most of the pictures come out "annoyling" grainy. I don't know what to do!
Is the AF Point Selection just no good? I heard the center one is the best to use, but the face or subject I want in focus isn't always smack dab in the center.
Is it the distance I am shooting from? If so could someone explain to me in simple terms what and how the best shooting distance is determined?
Is my camera no bueno and its just not capable sometimes of getting crisp shots?
Do I need to use manual focus and if so HOW> it seems like it would make photo taking take forever trying to make sure you get the right focus?
Personally, when hand-holding (which is 99.9% of my photography), the viewfinder is the way to go. A tripod has three legs for a reason - that's the minimum, if not the optimum, number of support points for a stable shot. When hand-holding, you needs to hold the camera as shown below: left hand under the lens, supporting the weight of the camera, right hand less support but with stability and using the controls, and the viewfinder to the eye, providing the contact to achieve the third point of support.
See what I mean here:
Looking at the photos, the issue, to me, seems to be in focus. Exposure may be better or worse, but the focus in some images is not right. You are using a good lens, and the shots I have seen do not suggest a shutter speed that would encourage camera shake, to I feel it is on what and how your camera is focusing.
I realize that you are using centre point focus, but the issue can be that even with setting a focus point correctly, as the camera is repositioned to compose or track the subject, the shutter button may lose track and focus on a different location. The solution I am suggesting exploring takes the focus function away from the shutter and assigns to to the AF-On button at the back of the camera. Thus you focus with that, it locks and then you can recompose and press the shutter button when ready to capture your image without risk of losing focus.
Here are a couple of You Tube videos on how to set that up and why you would want to do so:
See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AXUzslHnRc from Canon Aus.
Also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAfBQB7ZOKU for portraiture
And: Back Button Focus: Why and How! - YouTube
Setting up for the Rebel camera:
Setting up for the Rebel camera:
The other thing I do is to set up AE-Lock (auto-exposure lock) on the button with that label on the back of the camera. It is right beside the * button that is the usual place for the Focus lock.
There is a reason for both of these: as I said the advantage of using single (or very few) AF points is that you can place them precisely and the * can be set up to allow you to lock the focus and recompose. On the other hand, exposure needs to be controlled too, and sensors like to make whatever is the area considered for exposure metering to be about 18% grey - as such it will tend to make a dark subject lighter than reality or make a white subject look grey. By assigning AF-L on and using a single point of evaluation, one can point at a suitably toned location anywhere on the image, lock exposure, then lock focus on your subject with the * button beside it, recompose the photo and get both bang on. It is more complicated to explain that to do actually, so again I suggest viewing this video.
Like anything else, it takes a wee while to get used to, and you need to get used to finding those buttons without looking, but when you do, you will have serious control over your images.
To give you an example of this, I took the following image with my camera set to BBF and AE-L.
In this example, I needed to precisely get the closest eye in focus. So, using my BBF I aligned my single point AF to the eye and tapped the AF-On button and the focus locked. For the correct exposure, if I had used matrix metering the camera would have considered the vast amount of black in the image and over-exposed the subject. So, using single point exposure, I metered on the jersey by the subject raised hand and pressed the * to lock that. I then recomposed the image and pressed the shutter to execute the shot. All this took barely 2 secs.
In this example, I needed to precisely get the closest eye in focus. So, using my BBF I aligned my single point AF to the eye and tapped the AF-On button and the focus locked. For the correct exposure, if I had used matrix metering the camera would have considered the vast amount of black in the image and over-exposed the subject. So, using single point exposure, I metered on the jersey by the subject raised hand and pressed the * to lock that. I then recomposed the image and pressed the shutter to execute the shot. All this took barely 2 secs.
