Needed a reason to test out the lens I just got back from Canon. (Don't drop lenses, they don't like it) I took my 9 month out on his John Deere Buck for a few quick test photos. I think they got the lens fixed, now it is time to work on the operator. Let me hear you C&C
Yes, focus is off - too bad. So why is the focus off? Is he moving in those shots (delay form focus time to shot time?) Letting the camera choose the focus point? What focus point or focus technique did you use?
Another smaller detail to watch for when composing the shot is the background. The first two have a distracting bright light in the background. The last two are against the greenery behind him.
I also agree on the focus point seems to be near the handle bars. When playing with wide open aperatures and depth of field, your distance away from the subject is important as well to determine depth of field especially wide open where you will only have a length of 3-4 inches deep that will be in focus. Try to focus on the eyes, as long as they are sharp, the picture will work.
I am using a Canon 50mm 1.4 USM coupled to a Rebel XT body. I was shooting in AV mode mainly at f/1.8. I use auto focus but only allow the center point to be the focus point and I (amlost) always focus on the eyes. I compose the image after I focus.
He is quite a rambunctious little guy and most of the time his head was almost over the handlebars. As he moved around I am sure it is quite possible that his head moved in and out of the DOF. It is a bummer, one I didn't catch. I'll have to keep a better eye on that....
Thanks for the pointers on the background. When you are so intent on looking at your subject you sometimes forget about backgrounds. My bad.
may want to consider using TV mode instead of AV for an image like this where the subject is moving.. That way you can avoid motion blur like this. You didn't mention ISO either. May have to bump it up a little to get fast enough exp times.
Composing the image after you focus at 1.4 can be real tricky. And probably what caused the out of focus blur. You would be better surved using one of the other focus points that would allow you to compose your photo with out focusing and recomposing.
