Your Photograph Is in Focus. So Why Is It Still Soft?

For the next eight Mondays, I will publish a shorter technical photography lesson, each built around one precise problem. Some will cover fundamentals that are often misunderstood, while others will move into more advanced territory. Each lesson will stand on its own, so you can join at any point, and should take about five minutes to read. The longer Thursday Masterclasses will continue as usual.

We begin with a problem that is all too often blamed on autofocus: a photograph that appears in focus yet still looks disappointingly soft.

We begin with a problem that is often blamed on autofocus.

You return from a walk, open a photograph on a larger screen and discover that it looks soft. The camera appeared to focus correctly. The little square was on the person, the confirmation light appeared, and the lens did whatever expensive modern lenses do. Yet the eyes are not crisp, the hands have lost definition, and the whole frame seems slightly uncertain.

The immediate conclusion is usually that the camera missed focus. Often, it did not.

A photograph can be soft for three main reasons: the focus was placed at the wrong distance, the camera moved during the exposure, or the subject moved during the exposure. They may look similar at first, but they require different corrections.

When focus is wrong, another part of the photograph will usually be sharper. The ear may be clear while the eye is soft, or the wall behind a person may contain more detail than the person. The plane of focus exists, but it is in the wrong place.

Camera movement tends to affect the entire frame. Look for a slight double edge or a repeated smear travelling in the same direction across both subject and background. This is especially visible around bright points, lettering and strong architectural lines.

Subject movement is different again. A doorway or wall may be perfectly sharp while a face, hand or foot is blurred. The camera was steady and the focus may have been correct. The person simply changed position while the shutter was open.

Before changing your autofocus settings, identify which of those three things happened. Otherwise, you may spend half an hour adjusting focus tracking to solve a shutter-speed problem.

Recognising the cause is only the first step. The more useful question is how to prevent it without simply using an unnecessarily fast shutter speed for every photograph. In the rest of this lesson, we will reconsider the old focal-length rule, examine how movement within the frame should influence your settings, and consider why accepting a little more ISO is often the sensible compromise.

Free subscribers can continue using one of their complimentary monthly reads. If you have already used them, eligible readers can begin a free seven-day trial.

Next Monday: Auto ISO Without Giving the Camera Every Decision.

You can also check my previous series “Starting Photography, Properly”