Taking photos of people in front of landmarks

[bp2000]

I'd like to know how people take these photos to make sure everything is in focus.

Basically I'm thinking of a photo with a building 100m away and someone standing 2m in front of the camera.

I've tried to get a basic feel of the hyperfocal lengths and then use single auto focus + manual focus to focus on the person and then change the focus so they are at the edge of what I deem "acceptably sharp". I usually try to conservatively set the aperture so the hyperfocal length is 4m in this case. Roughly with a 14mm focal length, I think that is basically wide open, f/3.5 for my lens.

The problem is the result is usually pretty poor. I'd like to get peoples opinion on my method and let me know how you guys do it.

One of the things I find difficult is telling if a photo is in good focus on the 3" LCD. I usually feel I have to goto 10x to judge and then usually conclude everything is out of focus even if I'm at F/22. Also people get pretty annoyed if I'm sitting checking all the areas of the picture while they're waiting. I also find it frustrating that my lens has no focussing information and the camera doesn't display any as well.

[Peter_Hartland]

Re: Taking photos of people in front of landmarks

Depends on the camera you are using, if you have focus peaking this helps quite a lot. To do what you are asking for me I can usually only do with manual focusing lenses, & use old OLY OM lenses where you can easily see the hyperlocal settings & use a piece of software on my IPhone called DOF Master. My best lenses for this in the M3/4 are my Voghtlanders & use them in street photography where I set for the Hyperlocal & have focus peaking set & can immediately see if in focus if I hit the button

[bp2000]

Re: Taking photos of people in front of landmarks

I have an e-p1. So I don't think focus peaking is possible. I'm using the kit 14-42mm lens. I'm surprised it is so difficult as it is a pretty standard shot for novices. I guess you have a lot more dof on small sensor cameras which helps. I have a dof program on my phone, but it doesn't help the issue that much cause without info from my camera about distances I'm focusing at it is basically just saying, "with this aperature it should be possible".

[bp2000]

Re: Taking photos of people in front of landmarks

Thanks for the reply however, the good thing about this is it at least gives me a better idea what my next camera must have.

[Ralph Harwood]

Re: Taking photos of people in front of landmarks

Hi there BP2000!

I have just put some details into DOFMaster (http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html)
for you to try:- Using your lens at 14mm and f8 should give acceptable focus from 3.5ft to infinity with a subject at 10ft away from you. I find that sometimes DOFMaster is a little more optomistic on what is acceptable focus, but at f10 it should be a little bit better.

Bear in mind that the optimum f-stop for four-thirds sensors is around the f7.1-f8 range, as higher f-stops are likely to start suffering from diffraction, and you will also find that shutter speeds will start to drop as well in all but the best light.

So for you question posed in the first thread I would suggest 14mm, f10 focussed at 10ft (I tend to focus on an object that distance away from the camera and then lock focus by half pressing the shutter - you may need to compensate the exposure if the object is much lighter or darker).

I hope this helps,

Cheers,

Ralph.

[Naughty Nigel]

Re: Taking photos of people in front of landmarks

I don't know whether you really need to have the landmark in focus. The photograph is meant to be of a person standing in front of the landmark, so I would focus on their eyes, but would choose an aperture to ensure that the landmark was acceptably in focus too (from the point of view of recognisability).

This should be easy enough with a wide angle lens. However, in practice I think your subjects might need to stand more than 2 metres away from the lens.

[Harold Gough]

Re: Taking photos of people in front of landmarks

The question, as posed, is unanswerable.

How does the person feature in the frame, head and shoulders or with clear space above their head and below their feet?

Do you want to emphasise the distance between the person and the building (wideangle) or foreshorten it (telephoto)?

Harold

[benvendetta]

Re: Taking photos of people in front of landmarks

I don't know whether you really need to have the landmark in focus. The photograph is meant to be of a person standing in front of the landmark, so I would focus on their eyes, but would choose an aperture to ensure that the landmark was acceptably in focus too (from the point of view of recognisability).

This should be easy enough with a wide angle lens. However, in practice I think your subjects might need to stand more than 2 metres away from the lens.

I tend to agree with the above.

[bp2000]

Re: Taking photos of people in front of landmarks

The question, as posed, is unanswerable.

How does the person feature in the frame, head and shoulders or with clear space above their head and below their feet?

Do you want to emphasise the distance between the person and the building (wideangle) or foreshorten it (telephoto)?

Harold

Please see an example in the link below. Sorry the subject doesn't like her photo shared so I blacked it out. Nonetheless looking at the exif data revealed a lot of interesting information. Basically this wasn't well taken and not by the method I mentioned at the top of the thread. Nonetheless it is the type of shot I'm talking about.

Click Here

The relevant exif data is:
Exposure Time : 1/10
F Number : 13.0
ISO : 400
Focus Distance : 1.74
Depth Of Field : 3.05 m (1.10 - 4.15)
Focal Length : 24.0 mm
Hyperfocal Distance : 2.95 m

So I think the apparent out of focus nature of the subject is more to do with the long exposure time in this case than the depth of field. However, the 3m dof isn't gonna reach the building behind.

It frustrates me that the camera knows all of this information but is keeping it to itself.

The idea of this thread was to get an idea of the basic workflow of creating a shot with large dof rather than dissect my mistakes in a single shot.

BTW I only have a 14 to 42mm kit lens, so telephoto is a bit of an abstract concept at the moment.

[Guest]

Re: Taking photos of people in front of landmarks

Close down the aperture, f11 or smaller (Bigger number = smaller aperture.) then take a test shot, if everything including the person is in focus try a stop wider. Depending on the lens and distances involved you might get away with f5.6 or need to go to f22 or smaller. Manual focus allows you to focus with the aperture wide open and at a point between the person and the rest of the photo, which when you close the aperture will use hyperfocal length. While I know it is possible to calculate the hyperfocal length for a given lens I find trial and error works OK too.

[bp2000]

Re: Taking photos of people in front of landmarks

I don't know whether you really need to have the landmark in focus. The photograph is meant to be of a person standing in front of the landmark, so I would focus on their eyes, but would choose an aperture to ensure that the landmark was acceptably in focus too (from the point of view of recognisability).

This should be easy enough with a wide angle lens. However, in practice I think your subjects might need to stand more than 2 metres away from the lens.

So you would be voting to use auto focus to get the face of the subject and step up the aperture till it is acceptable and iso apparently to avoid blur. It's frustrating that according to the dof calculator if I had of stepped back a metre the subject and infinity would have been acceptably sharp... sigh!

It just feels that means the dof in front of the subject is wasted to my theoretical understanding (and that is all it is). According to the dof calculator, if I was 3m from the subject, I could focus approx. 6m and get the subject and building acceptably sharp with an f/6.7 setting. That means instead of shooting at ISO1600, shutter speed of 1/30 (which is closer to the shutter speed I guess I should have been using) and f/13. I could get back to ISO400 with the f/6.7 setting.

Like I said that is theoretical and I'm not sure if I 100% understand those concepts yet. Your approach would probably result in a sharper subject and is all a bit of a moot point as I can't do that sort of math/remember those figures in my head.

[Naughty Nigel]

Re: Taking photos of people in front of landmarks

So you would be voting to use auto focus to get the face of the subject and step up the aperture till it is acceptable and iso apparently to avoid blur. It's frustrating that according to the dof calculator if I had of stepped back a metre the subject and infinity would have been acceptably sharp... sigh!

It just feels that means the dof in front of the subject is wasted to my theoretical understanding (and that is all it is). According to the dof calculator, if I was 3m from the subject, I could focus approx. 6m and get the subject and building acceptably sharp with an f/6.7 setting. That means instead of shooting at ISO1600, shutter speed of 1/30 (which is closer to the shutter speed I guess I should have been using) and f/13. I could get back to ISO400 with the f/6.7 setting.

Like I said that is theoretical and I'm not sure if I 100% understand those concepts yet. Your approach would probably result in a sharper subject and is all a bit of a moot point as I can't do that sort of math/remember those figures in my head.

It all depends whether you need both subjects to be in focus. In my mind I like to focus on the person, whilst the background is sufficiently in focus to be clearly recognisable, but does not distract the eye from the person.

You are right that the correct point of focus should be behind the person. (the exact point is easily calculated), but this doesn't guarantee that the person's face will be in sharp focus.

[DerekW]

Re: Taking photos of people in front of landmarks

Take two pictures, one of the person in focus and one just the buildings in focus with out changing the focal length or point of view, then Photoshop the persons image onto the good picture of the building. You have the correct perspective and light in both images so transferring the sharp person into the building picture would be relatively straight forward.

[Harold Gough]

Re: Taking photos of people in front of landmarks

Please see an example in the link below. Sorry the subject doesn't like her photo shared so I blacked it out. Nonetheless looking at the exif data revealed a lot of interesting information. Basically this wasn't well taken and not by the method I mentioned at the top of the thread. Nonetheless it is the type of shot I'm talking about.

Click Here

The relevant exif data is:
Exposure Time : 1/10
F Number : 13.0
ISO : 400
Focus Distance : 1.74
Depth Of Field : 3.05 m (1.10 - 4.15)
Focal Length : 24.0 mm
Hyperfocal Distance : 2.95 m

So I think the apparent out of focus nature of the subject is more to do with the long exposure time in this case than the depth of field. However, the 3m dof isn't gonna reach the building behind.

It frustrates me that the camera knows all of this information but is keeping it to itself.

The idea of this thread was to get an idea of the basic workflow of creating a shot with large dof rather than dissect my mistakes in a single shot.

BTW I only have a 14 to 42mm kit lens, so telephoto is a bit of an abstract concept at the moment.

Your example looks fine to me, apart from Tinker Bell above your model's head.

That building is, effectively, at infinity. I would guess at f11 to get it sharp but I might not try.

Harold

[Zuiko]

Re: Taking photos of people in front of landmarks

If you are going to move close enough (or zoom tight enough) to include the person as head and shoulders or half length then you are likely to have problems getting both the subject and rhe background in sharp focus. I would follow Nigel's suggestion and focus on the person, leaving the background out of focus but still recognisable. An aperture of around f8 should be about right. If you use a wide angle setting (i.e. 14mm) and position the person so that they are full length in the picture, the you will have a much better chance of getting both the person and the landmark sharp.