Manuel Focus - Wall Color?

[cparent]

I've been working on trying to get my cameras (1100D's) to focus while being in Manuel focus mode - I've read that the remote trigger pressed half way down will get the cameras to focus while in MF… Over 50 + tests and it hasn't happened yet.
I am only using cards at the moment… tired of dealing with all of the cables - it's a pain in the ass.. with the limited space I have it's worth it, so I am not using any software.

I am also a little unclear as to what settings I should have - Live View, Live View (Face Detection) or Quick Mode.

I painted my walls black for my head captures which worked out great! saved me a lot of time with masking but now that I have 60+ cameras and I'm getting ready to do bodies I'm thinking that it would be best to go back to White - Is anyone having great results with Full Body Captures with Black Walls? From the several tests that I have done the extra light I purchased for the black Walls is really washing out the body so my guess is it's time to get the paint roller out again.

If anyone can shed some light on this i would be grateful.
C-

[chadfx]

Manual focus is truly manual focus with your setup, I believe. You turn the focus ring on the lens and that's about it. The camera should 'beep' to help you confirm focus.

What I think you might be looking for is to set your lens to AF mode; but in Live View mode this works differently. That's what the Live View (Face), and Quick Modes are for. The two live view modes will use contrast detect AF, which should be very precise, but are slower to focus. The Quick mode will flip down the mirror, blacking out your display and use the phase detect sensor as the camera normally does when shooting stills with the viewfinder.

Although I have a feeling most body scanner's here on the forum would say to set your focus with true MF as your setup should remain fairly consistent between subjects. Some might even suggest to set it once and tape the lens down do it doesn't move, even if bumped accidentally.

You should be able to find some video tutorials on youtube or vimeo how the live view AF works.

Hope that helps! -C

[mwillis]

I agree with ChadFx.  I suggest you take your camera out and take photographs in a variety of settings to see the results.  Knowing the basics of how you camera reacts will take you far.  You shouldn't need to re-paint your walls.

Like so many things in life, practice is important.  The best results in Photoscan are not achieved by just taking a bunch of photographs and clicking through the "workflow" menu.

[cparent]

Yeah... thanks willis - however that isn't quite what I am doing...

Thks chad - I was under the impression that people were somehow getting their systems to focus via remote trigger while in a quick mode which ideally is what I would like to happen - now that I am focused on full body captures.
I have had excellent results with the quick mode settings with heads without having to change my settings..  however, I am thinking that with full bodies in varies poses it might require a different approach... apparently not.

Closed.

[Marcel]

White walls might help you to bounce more light on your subject. More light means you can use a lower ISO (less noise, which will make for better scans).

[Marcel]

Because You can NOT focus better than the camera.

Actually for regular photography manual focus using zoomed in Live View is the most precise way of focusing. Cameras can have autofocus errors (back of front focus). When you use Live View, you see exactly what is in focus.

For taking pictures of people Auto Focus will work fine, (as long as your camera has a pattern to focus, ie: your subject is in the middle of your shot). You should be taking your pictures at F11 to F16 anyway to get maximum depth of field. Any slight focus error won't matter which such a deep range of focus.

[cparent]

Marcel - Thank you for the feedback -
I was thinking the same thing with the walls… I've been adjusting the ISO and the Lights trying to get some consistency - getting closer and closer...

I believe, most of the issues that I am dealing with is because of the space (or lack of it) that I am currently operating out of.

Just going to leave cameras in Live View for now... I'm thinking that I'll be able to use the manual focus when more space is available to me.
Thanks again for the input.