{"id":79453,"date":"2019-12-14T06:16:01","date_gmt":"2019-12-14T13:16:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=79453"},"modified":"2019-12-14T11:45:35","modified_gmt":"2019-12-14T18:45:35","slug":"sage-grouse-and-the-consequences-of-selective-focus-at-long-focal-lengths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2019\/12\/14\/sage-grouse-and-the-consequences-of-selective-focus-at-long-focal-lengths\/","title":{"rendered":"Sage Grouse And The Consequences Of Selective Focus At Long Focal Lengths"},"content":{"rendered":"

In bird photography we often learn by trial and error and experimentation. This is one of my early photography “field investigations” using a pair of Greater Sage Grouse on Utah’s Aquarius Plateau.<\/p>\n

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1\/1000, f\/13, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

I’d already spent some time photographing individual Sage Grouse in the small flock among the sagebrush when these two poked their heads up one in front of the other. This situation is seldom ideal for the bird photographer because at these focal lengths (I was shooting at an effective 1120mm) my depth of field is very shallow so one or the other of the two birds is likely to be very soft, depending on which one I focus on. Usually (though not always) we would want both subjects to be sharp.<\/p>\n

The general rule of thumb in these challenging situations is that it’s best to have the foreground subject sharp with a softer background bird rather than vice versa so I positioned my active focus point on the eye of the bird in front and fired away. This photo was one of my results. But when both grouse held these poses for a few moments I decided to perform a quick experiment.<\/p>\n

I moved my active focus point to the eye of the grouse in the background just to see what would happen to the sharpness of both birds relative to each other and to the sharpness of different elements in the sagebrush and grass setting.<\/p>\n

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1\/1000, f\/13, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

This was the result. What we can see of the background bird is now sharp and the grouse in the foreground is decidedly and annoyingly soft. It was this experiment that reinforced the previously cited “rule” in my mind that given a choice it’s best to have the foreground subject be the sharper of the two birds. Neither photo is ideal but I much prefer the first one (your mileage may vary).<\/p>\n

But the effects of selective focus aren’t limited to just the birds. The sharpness of different parts of the setting have also been altered – in particular the clump of sage directly to the right of the foreground grouse. It’s aggravatingly soft in the first shot but sharp in the second. I prefer that sage clump to be sharp as in the second photo but I prefer the relative sharpness of the two grouse in the first shot.<\/p>\n

There’s no practical solution to the conundrum of course but my experiment helped me to learn some of the effects of selective focus on my images. Now whenever I have two or more birds in the frame and not enough depth of field to get them all sharp I nearly always focus on the foreground bird. Learning by experience instead of because someone “told you so” is almost always best.<\/p>\n

Some rules really are meant to be followed rather than broken. Usually…<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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Notes:<\/em><\/p>\n