How to Get In-Focus Images When Shooting at Wide Apertures

A lot of us love to shoot at very wide apertures, but with that extremely narrow depth of field, you also have to be very careful to make sure you do not miss focus. This great video will give you some helpful tips for ensuring that you increase your keeper rate when you are shooting wide-aperture photos. 

Coming to you from Lindsay Adler Photography, this helpful video will give you some great tips for shooting at very wide apertures. Shallow depth of field portraits are quite popular, but they take careful technique and attention to your settings to make sure you get them right. Thankfully, many modern mirrorless cameras have some fantastic features to make your life a little easier, with eye autofocus being a particularly welcome innovation (even more impressive are cameras that accurately track the eye in continuous mode or even work with animal eyes). Nonetheless, even with modern tools, you still need proper technique. One often overlooked issue is the way you hold your camera: be sure that you are keeping your elbows into your body, stand still, and try to exhale with each shot to steady yourself. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Adler. 

Alex Cooke's picture

Alex Cooke is a Cleveland-based portrait, events, and landscape photographer. He holds an M.S. in Applied Mathematics and a doctorate in Music Composition. He is also an avid equestrian.

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6 Comments

How many times did she say, "Canon R5"? This video has been brought to you by Canon R5! I do believe she is a Canon Sponsored Photographer, maker of the Canon R5, right?

Change title to "How to Get In-Focus Images When Shooting at Wide Apertures? Buy an R5."

Well, didn't watch the video, but on the EOS R I've set AF to be able to manually correct focus using the EVF magnification. AF is pretty reliable, but doesn't know where I want the exact focus, so I check and correct if necessary. I guess this can be done with most if not all mirrorless cameras today.
Focus peaking is a nice feature, but like AF not always 100% reliable (on the Canon EOS R, and on my older Leica Q when it comes to "macro" stuff).

No, the EOS R has it too, after a firmware update. Anyway, the R5/R6 should have improved AF.

Focus peaking with manual lenses.
Or get a Sony with eye AF (you could get a Canon R5 if you're sponsored too)😂