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I pulled over in the car to try and capture a shot of a pair of horses running around in their paddock. As soon as I got my camera out they stopped. I waited but nothing happened so I settled for a portrait instead. I was quite happy with the shot until I looked on the computer screen and realised that the nose was a little soft. I wondered what the best option is here. Should I close the aperture a bit, change the focal point or a bit of both (focal point was on the eyes).
I have selectively sharpened to try and recover it.
Camera settings: f/5.6, 1/160s, ISO 100, 150mm, maybe 5 or 6m from subject
Thanks in advance, Phil
| Camera: | Olympus E-510  Check out Olympus Image Space! |
| Lens: | 40 - 150mm |
| Recording media: | RAW (digital) |
| Title: | Awkward Horse |
| Username: | 
Philo |
| Uploaded: | 18 Sep 2010 - 3:53 PM |
| Tags: | Wildlife / nature |
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Unrated These stats show the percentage of wins and the rating score that your photo has achieved. You can go to the VS Mode by clicking on this icon. Signup to e2Signup to e2 to see which photo this has won or lost against in the vs mode |
| Votes: | Voting Disabled |
 | Critique Wanted |
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Comments
A bit of both possibly Phil.
Because of the size and length of a horse's head, I think it's almost always going to be a compromise.
Even when it's perfectly focused a horse's nose has a softness about it so by focusing on the eye and getting that right any softness around the nose looks perfectly normal.
It does to me anyway!
Bren.
Unfortunately, there are two kinds of animals in the world: the kind that see you and run away and the kind that see you, get curious and come up to say hello. Neither can be photographed acting naturally. 
The simple answer to your sharpness question is that horses are big animals with big heads and f/5.6 just isn't going to give you enough depth of field to get the nose and eyes sharp. DOFMaster.com suggests that, with your shot settings, you were getting only about 20cm total depth of field; pushing to f/8 will give you an extra 10cm and f/11 will take you to about 45cm total but might be too costly in terms of shutter speed. As such, f/8 and focusing a little way in front of the eye is probably a good compromise. At this sort of focal length and subject distance, the region of sharp focus is split roughly 50-50 in front and behind of the point of focus.
However, having said that, I don't think the nose looks too bad at this resolution (your high-res original may be a different story). The hairs are clearly visible. What I would say, though, is that the whole image looks a little soft — look, for example, at the weave of the cloth band above the horse's eye, which is very close to the focal plane so should be about the sharpest thing in the frame. Camera shake is the most likely cause, since your shutter speed of 1/160s is rather slow compared to the effective 300mm focal length. Your camera's image stabilizer has compensated for this to a large extent, giving you a photo that's decently sharp, rather than horribly soft. Still, the less work the image stabilizer has to do, the sharper the shot will be and, in this case, you could easily have gone to ISO-200 to halve your exposure time at f/5.6. If it wouldn't introduce too much noise, ISO-400 and f/8 would be the way to go: faster shutter and more DoF.
The other alternative Phil is to use a shorter focal length, - the shorter it is, the greater the depth of field (no pun) at any given aperture, - you would have got more horse, but could have cropped a portrait from it.
W
Though it's important to note that if you compensated for the wider angle of view by moving closer to the horse to get the same framing in the viewfinder, you'd get (almost) exactly the same depth of field as you did from further back with the longer lens. The key point in Willie's suggestion is that you're taking the photo from the same distance and then cropping.
Phil, I agree with you; the mod has turned a bay into a chestnut with a black mane, a combination which does not exist! Moreover the darkening has lost detail of the neck shadows and the mane. I do a lot of horse photos (blame the wife) and I'd endorse everything Dave has said about ISO and depth of field when using a telephoto.
Seamus
All horses are a little mad but I feel and this is just a personal thing that they are not as mad as the riders. No brakes, No steering wheel or handle bars and the ability to travel as any speed it likes. No not for me thank you. I do like the picture though its very well caught.
David.
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