So the 5d II did it to me tonight. I thought it locked in on a shot, I quickly glanced at the LCD and it looked fine. However, once I load it on the computer, the focus is about a foot in front of the couple. (Wide shot with the couple in about 1/8th of the frame).
What is the best way to attempt to bring it back in focus. I can get away with a bit of OOF since it is a wide shot, but I was hoping to get it a bit better than what it is. I tried the sharpen tool in LR and using the RAW converter in PS. I also did more with smart sharpen, but I am not sold on that method as being the best.
i would do a selective unsharp mask in PS...basically, just select the happy couple, whether you want to use a masking brush, or the magic wand (except the magic wand sometimes just gets too close...)...and then do an unsharp mask on just the selected area....and then hope they dont ask for a tighter crop of your wide shot!! haha
Deleting it is probably the best choice unless it's an award winning image and the couple knew you took it and desperately want it. Best thing is to sharpen the whole image as much as possible, convert to black and white and add some film grain.
Focus Magic is good, but you have to realize that it isn't really magic, although that is it's name. If you look at the image at 100 percent, it isn't going to look like it should have if the image was in focus in the first place. Secondly, it will look great when printed, but not necessarily when seen on a monitor.
Go easy with it and look at printed results. Unless the image is only going to be seen on a monitor, the images will look surprisingly good.
The best thing is to tighten up on the focus in the first place. Find out why it is happening--whether it is user error or an actual problem, and fix it.
I think you'll like this. In photoshop: 1. Duplicate layer 2. Filter > Other > High Pass. Set the slider to where you see just the outline of the image. That may be somewhere around 4 to 5. 3. Change the blending mode to anywhere from Overlay to Linear light to taste. The high pass makes the edges more contrasty so it appears sharper.
Oh I should also point out that while this might come as a huge surprise to most of you... neither focus magic nor Topaz infocus work nearly as well YOUR images as they do on the images they show you the demo for ... in fact as far as Topaz infocus, while the results THEY show are impressive... I've not been able to get any form of improvement on the images I tried. Oh well. I did watch Youtube videos on how to use it... so I don't THINK it's just me.
I have to laugh at the B/W thing... 'round here, we have a "f*** it - sepia!" motto we use very loosely.