[Gooshin]

based on these responses, i guess i'm probably just moving. i'll have to get a tripod see what happens.

at F1.4-F2.8 even half a foot of backward/forward movement is enough to throw off your focus

replicate your attempts with a tripod

and manual focusing takes practice, the "indicator" is a very good guide, it lets you know once oyu have reached the "focus zone", afterwhich you really do have to trust your eye sight to "confirm"

[shadeless]

you have to use the green hexagon instead of the flashing red square as focus indicator. the square just shows you the af point and is really unreliable to tell if something is in focus or not.

DB,
i did not check my diopter adjustment. i'm still new to this and don't really know what that is. i was not using a tripod. its on my "i better get one of those f'n things real soon" list.

The adjustment is via the slide mechanism immediately above the eyepiece. It may or may not need correcting depending on your eyesight. As you don't have a tripod, put the camera on a stable surface and autofocus on something. Look in the viewfinder and make sure that it looks in focus to your eye. If you move the slider things will either become sharper or blurrier.

[Marc Sabatella]

While the focus screen will lie and show you too miuch in focus at f/1.4, the effect by itself wouldn't account for differences of the magnitude you are seeing . I think you are just subsconsciously accepting the image as in focus if the foreground person looks sort of close but the background is also in focus, rather than what you should be looking for the background should be clearly *out of focus*, and the foreground optimally focused. Instead of focusing by just making a yes/no determination, learn to "see" the focus zone, and watch it move forward and backwards as you turn the ring. The images is in focus when the focus zone has moved forward of the background to your subject but not so far forward that it's in front of your subject.

I agree with Marc... the subjects are way to far out of focus to be a Focus/recompose --- DOF issue.

And the background is in perfect focus. The board in the one shot, and the child in the other.

Practice... and for a while just look at your subject... even in the viewfinder you will see it coming into focus and you should be able to get really close focus even in the subject is off center.

[WMBP]

I think you SHOULD fix the diopter. Remember, you adjust the diopter so that the LED characters displayed at the bottom of the viewfinder (BELOW the image area) are in focus. When the setting info in the LED is nice and sharp, you'll be in the best position to evaluate focus in the finder with your eyes.

If you are focusing by hand (as you apparently are) then there is a real possibility that your hand can be sloppy and cause the focusing barrel to slip as you're shooting. You need to develop good hand technique here.

Try shooting with greater depth of field, that is, using higher f-numbers for the aperture, like f/5.6 or f/6.5, and see if your shots don't improve. As Gooshin or somebody already said, IF you are pretty close to your subjects AND IF you are using a fairly wide aperture (like f/2.8) then focus and recompose could indeed be causing your pictures to go out of focus.

HOWEVER, in the pic with the little girl in the middle, I don't see why you would use focus and recompose, so that doesn't explain that shot.

I'd start by getting the diopter adjusted properly and go from there.

Will