I don't have my camera here with me for reference, but I'd be willing to learn. I do manually focus on occasion, but I've always played my photography off of what looked right to me and not what settings said. Drove my high school photography teacher nuts, lol. less

Certainly a quiet night here! First time poster here, I just happened to see this as I was browsing through a community roundup.

As for the depth of focus discussion, from experience, I always recommend keeping a close eye on where the auto-focus point is (if you use auto-focus)! I've wrecked more than a few photos because I forgot to manually set the focus point to be used, and instead of a nice sharp face in a portrait, the tree behind the person is tack sharp! Thankfully, I've never done that with a client, but certainly a few times on my own personal shoots! less

Certainly a quiet night here! First time poster here, I just happened to see this as I was browsing through a community roundup.

As for the depth of focus discussion, from experience, I always recommend keeping a close eye on where the auto-focus point is (if you use auto-focus)! I've wrecked more than a few photos because I forgot to manually set the focus point to be used, and instead of a nice sharp face in a portrait, the tree behind the person is tack sharp! Thankfully, I've never done that with a client, but certainly a few times on my own personal shoots! less

My mom saved up and got one. It's pretty neat how it does it. A lens on each side take a picture at the same time. To get the 3-D effect it displays the two pictures on top of each other. Otherwise you can print either one. You can use the two lenses to take one regular picture and one in B&W, etc. It's pretty nifty. less

Moving forward...
Macrophotography is the one area of photography where the application of DOF not only can make a the subject stand out, but had make a photo into an ethereal display of art. This is especially the case with shallow depths of field (large apertures/small f-stops). In most cases with macrophotography, you want to do everything possible to maximize depth of field, because by nature macro lenses and macro modes have reduced depth of field. As such, it can be difficult, if not impossible, to get everything you want to be in focus actually be in focus. In this case, you need to figure out what precisely needs to be in focus and accentuate that. If your subject is an animal, you usually need to make sure the eyes are in focus. For flowers, the edge of a petal, the tips of the reproductive structures, or some other leading edge is usually the most pleasing to the eye. Inanimate objects are much the same way, as leading edges or interesting focal points are usually the desired to be in focus. In all three cases, it is important to get the leading edge you want to have in focus be parallel to your camera lens. Sometimes having it at another angle can yield nice photos, but in general you’ll want to make sure as much of that edge as possible is in focus.



Beyond that, the amount of DOF is up to you. Do you want most of your subject to be in acceptable focus to maximize the amount of detail, or do you want to minimize it to create something abstract? Neither is necessarily the wrong choice, but choosing one over the other should reflect what you want to say artistically about the subject matter.

If you do intend to do macrophotography and want to maximize the amount of depth of field, make sure not to make to back-focus slightly. For example, if you were photographing a flower and wanted to make sure the leading edge of the flower and as much of the rest of the flower as possible was in focus, don’t make your focal point the leading edge. Instead, move your focal point back just enough so that the leading edge starts to become fuzzy (the exact amount depends on several factors, most importantly the f-stop). By doing so, you are extending the depth of field a bit farther than had you made your focal point the leading edge.
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Yup, autofocus is a blessing, but only when it works properly! I couldn't imagine trying to shoot a fast-paced game, like football or basketball on manual focus! I mean, if you could focus on just one point, like right near the basket to get a particular shot, I could see that working. But, imagine trying to follow the action of the game?!? That's some incredibly skillful manual focusing!

I also agree regarding the math, I never do the math on the fly, I just take a few test shots and check the LCD. I have a lot of respect for people who came from or still shoot film, and have to do that kind of math since they can't check the shots until the shoot is done!!! less