Yes, I know...it's tuesday. I had trouble with the video in this post but I finally got it uploaded today, yippeeee!

Objective: the experiment with selective focus, your auto focus point selector and depth of field.

Over the last year or so we have talked about composition and how to control your depth of field using your f-stop or aperture. If you have not been reading these all along, it may be a good idea to review the lesson on depth of field, composition and rule of thirds before you go on. The links that I just gave go to my old blog (I am still working on moving all of the older content over to this newer blog). Today I am showing you an example of choosing a selective focus point and combining that with shallow depth of field.

Here is our example shot for today:

(tech info for the above shot: shot in manual using studio lights, F 3.5, shutter speed 1/160, lens: 50 mm, ISO: 125)

The shot above would not be possible if your camera only focuses on the center point in an image because the area of sharp focus is in the lower right corner. The other thing that adds emphasis in this shot is the very shallow depth of field. You can see in the tech specs that I used f 3.5. The fact that I am close to my subject helps make the background even softer. Remember, the closer you are to your subject, the more dramatic the depth of field will be. The lens that I was using is the Canon 50 mm compact macro, which allows you to be very close to an object and get nice sharp focus.

Setting your selective focus: Many of the digital cameras out today have the option to set a specific focus point. The default setting of most cameras usually takes information from multiple places in your frame and tries to track or determine what you are photographing and how far away it is.  Often, the default works fine. Every once in a while though, when you are trying to frame something up off center or something else that is tricky, it gets confused and won't focus where you want it to. There are two ways to try and solve this problem and I made a little video talking about it.

This week Julie (my studio manager) and I also tried out my Canon 5D mark II video feature for the first time. Go easy on us...we have a lot to figure out in that department. If we spent any more time on it trying to make it perfect it would never have gotten posted. I'm excited about the prospect of doing more video stuff for you guys though and I promise to do some homework between now and then to make it a little easier on the eyes.