Missing Focus? Check Out These Helpful Tips

One of the most frustrating things all photographers experience at one time or another is missing a shot because the focus was off. When that happens, the great tips in this video will help you make things right again. 

Coming to you from Michael The Maven, this helpful video will give you five tips for fixing focusing problems. If you are shooting on a DSLR and your images are consistently missing focus by the same amount in the same direction (front or back focus), you might need to make an autofocus microadjustment. If your lens does need an AFMA, check out this article, which will guide you through the entire process. On the other hand, one error that I discovered myself making quite a bit when I was first starting was setting the shutter speed too slowly for my action and mistaking the blurry results for missed focus. In the quest to get low-ISO images, you might want to keep the shutter speed a bit slower, but it is always better to have a sharp image shot at a higher ISO than a blurry one shot at a lower ISO. Check out the video above for lots of helpful tips. 

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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11 Comments

Well there's your problem, you're trying to use Eye AF and instead clicking on her chest!

Sevral issues can affect shaprness.

A new low in click bait. So oh wow you didn’t notice the cover picture!

Perhaps his Cinematographer could pull back a little, cutting one's hands off is not a good thing. And make the environment pleasant looking, it looked like he shot it in his parents basement.

Shutter speed?
ISO?
Sharper lenses?

These don't fix "focus problems."

Slow shutter speeds can cause focus problems.

Sharpness, perhaps. But not focus. Focus happens prior to shutter activation.

If the shutter speed is too slow, all it takes is a slight movement from either the subject or photographer and it'll knock the image out of focus.

Lol, some people on here gettin' all riled up over covered breasts. hahaha wtf

Be careful saying “breasts” here. My comment was deleted because of that by the Fstoppers police.

More often, it's not what you say, it's in what context you say it. I saw your comments and they were pretty immature. You posting the same comments again for the 2nd time after they were deleted makes you look immature.