Whether it is needed to shoot wedding photography or large group photo, keeping everyone in focus is not only challenging but also tedious.
However, the job can be simple if you know how to take large group photos with everyone in focus.
Typically it’s all about applying some technique on certain functions to keep everyone in focus for the best portrait.
Read on to learn some handy yet simple techniques to cover a whole lot of subjects focused on photos and shoot the appropriate portrait without cropping or sacrificing resolution.
How to Take Large Group Photos with Everyone In Focus
Three elements need to use properly to take large group photos keeping everyone in focus. The elements are depth of field, aperture, and lens.
Depth of field
Depth of field refers the distance between the closest subject and the most distant subject in focus in the image.
When posing a group for a portrait, it needs to layer the objects and the DOF puts them at different distances from the camera.
To keep all of the people in focus in the group photo, you have to make the depth of field great enough so that all of the people in the group fit inside that area.
You can do this by using a Depth of Field Calculator app to avoid math. However you have to know is the distance from your camera to the subjects and the lens’s focal length.
Additionally, you have to memorize the aperture setting that you will use and the distance between farthest and nearest people in the focus.
Then simply input all the data in the app and it will tell you the depth of field.
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The aperture
The aperture is the easiest setting to adjust. You can simply move the camera or change the focal length to control the DOF without changing the image’s composition.
If adjusting the aperture isn’t still good enough, move your camera a bit away from the subjects or widen the lens’s focal length.
For this, you can guesstimate adjust your settings, take test photos and check the sharpness.
After finding the DOF, you have to find out how to focus properly. Remember the DOF area expands facing and behind the focus points.
Hence, during focusing, you have to make sure there is enough DOF behind the point of focus so you can get everyone on focus in group photo.
To have all of the subjects in focus with the current depth of field, you need to focus somewhere in between the front and back subjects in a group with several layers of people.
You could focus on someone in the center of the group. But you need to make sure the depth of field will extend far enough in front of and behind the person you focus on.
The other thing you can do is manipulate the depth of field so that you can focus on the front subject and still have enough depth of field behind them.
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Lens
The most common problems typical lens have are lessening in quality and image’s sharpness across the lens’s edge.
Additionally, the picture can also have distortions at the lens’s edge that make the head of the subject look weird and warped.
However the amount of quality loss in the image is vary depending on the lens.
Generally, cheaper lenses cause more quality loss at the edges, while costlier models are less likely.
In addition, zoom lenses are more likely to have a quality loss at the edges while prime lenses are less likely.
Since this varies so madly, you should check and select with your lenses.
And if you’re ever unsure of the edge quality of the lens, a good way to ensure that everyone is in focus is to not compose so tightly that you have subjects at the edges of the lens.
If you frame the shot wider intending to crop for the composition you want, you can maintain the sharpness and reduce the distortion of your subjects.
Two more simple techniques are:
Watch Shutter Speed
Sometimes shutter speed becomes slower and causes blur from the shaking of hands or movement of the people in e photo.
In general, 1/60 of a second shutter speed is fast enough for capturing a group of photos with standing people. But a slight movement can create blur at this shutter speed.
In this case, you can try 1/200 of a second which is decent for the person who can’t sit still. It won’t be obvious in large groups as the group size make it hard to notice.
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Stand Farther Away From the Group
A general rule of thumb is that the far away from the subject you’ll stand, the larger depth of view you’ll get.
However, you may need to crop slightly after the fact, still, it’s far better than keeping some people out of the focus.
Luckily the latest camera models have lots of megapixels to make some crops.
However, the problem is that standing too far away can cause you to crop a lot while too close can cause you to shrink the depth of field.
You can also consider the purpose of using the image to determine the amount of crop.
For example, if you need to post the image on the web, you can crop it in as it doesn’t require a lot of resolution.
But if you desire to print large, you have to be more careful.
Final Words
Getting everyone in focus in a group photo isn’t hard. It’s only need to understand the required DOF and way to get it and the right area to focus.
Hence your group will remain in the depth of field area.
After knowing how to take large group photos with everyone in focus, hope you can get the desired quality portrait without sacrificing the resolution.