much help needed (1 Viewer)

with cannon eos 7d, and 400mm f/5.6 lens

I switched my lens to the close setting for auto focus, (3.5 mm instead of 8.5) and I opened up the f-stop to attempt to bring more of the photo into focus, but I am really struggling with getting sharp images (always, but especially when there are multiple subjects like here).

settings were:
manual shooting mode
shutter- 1/640
aperature- 13
ISO speed 400.
This photo is cropped but otherwise unedited

Help please!

What AF area mode did you use, single point? - where is the focus point? (you can check this in DPP) It looks to me as if the focus point was in front of the 'flutterbys'.

I was using single point expansion (probably a pretty poor choice in this situation) I never change out of that mode since I most often photograph birds and they tend to move around a lot. That is a pretty no brainer way I could improve in the case of this photo that I overlooked out of inexperience!

The AF point is actually located on the ground. If you were to picture the butterflies as if they were arranged to represent a # 7 (rotated counter clockwise), the focal point is on the inside of the arm of the #7. Hopefully that makes sense!

tom baxter said:

The AF point is actually located on the ground. If you were to picture the butterflies as if they were arranged to represent a # 7 (rotated counter clockwise), the focal point is on the inside of the arm of the #7. Hopefully that makes sense!

Click to expand...

I think I am following you but the focus point should be right on one of the butterflies - at least that one will be sharp and in focus but I doubt any of the others will be as the depth of field is going to be pretty shallow even at f13.