Your Advice Please

Trouble is (as you know) there is focus and acceptable focus, the latter being what the eyes perceive to be in focus at a glance...this works quite well in for example landscape photography.

And focus works either side of where your actually pointing the camera at, so in the shot above your focus would extend from the middle of the shot (about 3/4 of the way along the gulls) outwards, so a small depth of field eg F2 would have focused sharply on a couple of birds only, so going large depth of field eg F16 would have got more of the birds in focus.

All the above you already know and understand, I've written it out so I can further expand on it.

Even with a very large depth of field..F29 or F36 you would struggle to get all of the birds in focus due to the fact that the line of gulls stretch right to the very foreground..so ...what to do?

Firstly, I would have ensured the line of gulls was as central as possible. I also would have shot it in portrait mode too, this expands the space around either end of the line of gulls (in the viewfinder) to lessen the need for more extreme F numbers.

I'd have started at F11, ISO set for the prevailing light, probably started at ISO200, then set shutter for exposure, anything less than 1/60 (where motion starts to blur give or take) and I would change ISO to 400 and try again.

Another trick would be to zoom out to allow a shallower depth of field over the line of gulls in relation to scene size viewed in the viewfinder, shallower depth of field would allow a better ISO and or faster shutter speed. Then crop down in post processing.

And another last resort trick if your ever confused with where to start setting wise in full manual mode...is to take a shot in Auto mode, view the shot and if its good view the settings Auto used and adjust for your final manual shot.

In this scenario Sport mode (if your camera has it) would also have given a decent indication too as this freezes action (birds too!).

Hope this helps!

Steve...

 

Of course..please do.

Good luck!

Steve...