Where to focus?

[MyLeicaWorld]

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While taking indoor portrait photos with my m10 Summicron 35 asph v1,  I found that my images are not sharp as I expected. Where do usually focus on the face to get sharp images?

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[tom.w.bn]

Are they not sharp because they are slightly out of focus or is it camera shake? Maybe exposure time is a bit too long. You mentioned it was indoors.

Normally people focus on the eyes.

[Mikep996]

Are you focusing with the rangefinder or the Live View?  If you are using the rangefinder, try focusing with live view/focus peaking and see if the results are sharper.  I ran into that issue a couple of weeks ago with an M10 I had just purchased on Ebay.  It was razor sharp with live video focusing and quite soft with rangefinder focusing because the rangefinder was out of calibration.  Once calibrated, the rangefinder/live view provided equal sharpness.

 

Edited May 26, 2020 by Mikep996

[250swb]

If you are making a portrait focus on the nearest eyeball. If the lens is wide open at f/2 bracket focus to compensate for you maybe moving a fraction. If the shutter speed is low you will get camera shake, increase the ISO (better still set it to Auto and have the camera set so the lowest shutter speed is 1/125th sec.). Use a tripod, this will help with fine focusing. If your aperture is small, say f/5.6 and smaller beware of focus peaking, it will tell you a general area that will be in focus but not the critical area, for critical focus with focus peaking always open the aperture to its widest to focus then stop down again to the shooting aperture. 

[lct]

52 minutes ago, Mikep996 said:

Are you focusing with the rangefinder or the Live View?  If you are using the rangefinder, try focusing with live view/focus peaking and see if the results are sharper.  I ran into that issue a couple of weeks ago with an M10 I had just purchased on Ebay.  It was razor sharp with live video focusing and quite soft with rangefinder focusing because the rangefinder was out of calibration.  Once calibrated, the rangefinder/live view provided equal sharpness.

+1

[evikne]

Be careful if you recompose the image in the viewfinder after focusing, so you don't change the distance from the subject.

[mujk]

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On 5/26/2020 at 3:32 PM, evikne said:

Be careful if you recompose the image in the viewfinder after focusing, so you don't change the distance from the subject.

I have found recomposing to be a common source of "portrait" unsharpness at closer distances and larger apertures, provided that all other things are ok (rangefinder calibration, no movement unsharpness).