Another My Cat Suzy Pic B][/B]

[Redeyesurfer]

Suzy on a bright sunny day. The backgound is zoysia grass which in winter is close to the same color she is. I took this at a fair distance and zoomed in, which I assume is why the backgrould is blurred. Which to me is fine. Sometimes I like the background blurred. It makes for very nice computer wallpaper because it's not cluttered.

[dbutler]

I think your DOF on this one is perfect! Anything more textured or "clear" would have distracted from her and her coloring and pattern. It also allows her to look almost 3D. The fact that you took the photo on her level makes it an even better shot IMO. This is a sweet image!

[SmartWombat]

Better lit, this one.
I like the background separation form the cat, nicely done.

Why not try, if you get this light again, to use a different AF point?
It looks as if you're using the centre AF point, which is usually the most accurate, and so your subject is centred.
If you used an AF point on the right hand side of your viewfinder, and still focus on her eyes, then there would be a space on the left for her to look into.

[Redeyesurfer]

Thanks for the kind words DButler. No one's said anything I've done lately is perfect Geeze, I'm liable to get a swelled head or something. You wouldn't believe how many imperfect photos I have on my hard drive at the moment. I only found this site the other day and thought I'd try posting a few pics to it. I used to post on another site which unfortunately went down. I've got quite a few other fairly good cat photos of my other two cats (They are Tuxedo Cats) but I dont' want to post too many of them for fear of becoming known as "the cat guy"

Smart Wombat I like you suggestion about shifting the focus and giving the cat some space to stare into. I hadn't thought about that. Actually I'm a pretty casual photographer and hadn't even thought about that feature of my camera in a couple of years although it was something I used to do routinely. On my camera to do this I have to center of my subject and then hold partially down of the shutter and then move my camera slightly to one side before pushing all the way down on the shutter. I'm not sure if this is how most camera's do this or not.

[SmartWombat]

You wouldn't believe how many imperfect photos I have on my hard drive at the moment

I think I would Some race days I may take 1000 photos, and a fair number of those go in the bin !
But if you don't show people your bad shots, they don't know you've got any ;)


OK, pre-focussing and moving the camera works - but you have to be careful if you're using a wide open aperture because as you turn the camera the focus might not be where you want it to be !

Bear with me on this, the picture below may be confusing.

Your victim the cat (green) is off centre, so you pan over and put the focus point on kitty's eyes and half-press the shutter. That sets the focus and you have a plane of focus which is right where you want it.

Now you pan back to put puss where you want in the frame and take the shot.
See the plane of focus is actually further back?

The green line is the ideal plane of focus, and the resulting red line when you compose it with the cat on the right is where your focus plane actually ends up.

It's not your lens' fault, or your camera's, it's down to technique.
If you've got focus points out from the centre (like on a DSLR) then use them !
If your eyesight is good enough to focus manually, then this is one time where you might need to - assuming you place your subject out of range of the AF points.

Or you could just stop down, increase the depth of field until it covers the whole cat

Apologies to the cat for the poor drawing, mine is that fat