basic photography 101 - focus

hello, welcome!

i'm starting a new direction for my blog. i want to help people! in this new beginning i will be focusing (no pun intended) on photography basics and featuring etsy sellers who have great photography, along with what makes that particular photo (or photos) great. all of this for my wonderful friends on Etsy. If you've stumbled on my blog for some other reason, that's great! these helpful hints can help you too, just remember my main agenda here is to help other etsy sellers.

today's lesson: focus, focus, focus

do i need to say it again? FOCUS!

say it with me now - F-O- ok, i'm sure you get the point now

i would have to say that without a doubt focus is the number one most important aspect of taking photographs. you can have every other aspect right and if your focus is well, out of focus, then the photo is useless (unless you're into fine art photography and your intention was for it to be out of focus...if this applies to you, then stop reading here :) )

as for the other 99.9% of us who just want to take better pictures let's get moving along now. there are a couple other things that go hand in hand with focus - like depth of field and exposure, but those i'm saving for a later post so i can elaborate on them without getting off topic here.

so, how do you tell if your photo is in focus? well, for starters, look at it. i mean seriously - LOOK. is the item you're trying to sell sharp? is the photo a little shaky? is one part in focus but the rest isn't? let's address these things. i will be using my own personal photos for this lesson today.

first off, is the item you're trying to sell sharp? what i mean is. is it a little blurry? is there something distracting about the photo? a blurry spot that bothers you? this is the beauty of digital photography - the delete key and the ability to take another photo. your photos tell a story about your item. customers can't touch your merchandise, they can't smell it, they can't hold it. you have to do your best to photograph it in the very best way possible so they can fall in love with it and buy it!

here is an example of a few different pair of earrings i've photographed:




these small pictures are deceiving. if you click on the images you will see that all three of them are out of focus. not by much - but just enough to really matter. what you say? they look in focus in the small image, so can't i just use them? NO. you can't. your sellers don't just look at the small images. they click on them. they make them bigger. they will see that it's out of focus. this could be off putting to some buyers. i mean, you, as a seller, can't take the time to make certain your photo is in focus??? then how do i know, as a buyer, that you took the time to make sure your item was crafted carefully - no loose beads, no frayed edges, etc etc?

enough about how important in focus images are. now, i will give you a couple of pointers for how i focus my images. let me say that i have a dSLR and a standard digital point and shoot. so i know that my methods work with either camera. i photograph in manual mode, no flash, natural light only (unless i'm using the flash as a fill - more on that later), and i use the center focus on my camera.

that means that i set my camera's auto focus to Center-Weight - not Multi-Zone. center-weight means that when you push the button down half way to focus on your subject it focuses on the center of the image. now, the idea here is to NOT center every image (again, more on that later) so what you do is press the shutter half way down, focus on whatever you are photographing, then without moving your camera much at all, simply recompose your image and finish the photograph. now, keep in mind, any changes you make toward or away from your subject will affect the focus, but you can move left, right, and even up and down very carefully while maintaining focus. it takes practice. use an apple. orange. book. whatever. just practice. make sense?

i think maybe that's enough for today. any questions? comment here and i will get back to them. i'm not sure what the next lesson will be yet - we'll see where this gets us!