User Error and first post

[VivianG]

Hi everyone,
I trying to understand my camera. I set my camera on the tripod an attempted to take this shot. What I noticed in every 100% crop is that the handle is out of focus.
I'm a little over two feet from the basket, the basket is about 16". I'm using single point focusing almost on the middle of the basket. The handle on the bottom is OOF.

Where am I failing in understanding my camera.
http://WiseGirl.smugmug.com/photos/16171988-L.jpg (http://wisegirl.smugmug.com/photos/16171988-L.jpg)

Thanks for your help,
Vivian
Shooting Mode
Aperture-Priority AE
Tv( Shutter Speed )
5
Av( Aperture Value )
22.0
Metering Mode
Evaluative Metering
Exposure Compensation
+1/3
ISO Speed
400
Lens
18.0 - 55.0 mm
Focal Length
38.0 mm
Image Size
3504x2336
Image Quality
Fine
Flash
Off
White Balance Mode
Cloudy
AF Mode
One-Shot AF
Parameters Settings
Contrast Standard
Sharpness Standard
Color saturation Standard
Color tone 0
Color Space
sRGB

[Shay Stephens]

You could try shooting from further back. That will increase your DOF (depth of field).

Also the focus point has the front 1/3 and the back 2/3 in focus. So you may want to move the focus point closer to the camera to get the handle in focus while still allowing the rest to be reasonably in focus too.

Failing all that. Take two shots from the tripod. Each shot has a different focus point. Combine the sharpest parts of each image into one perfectly sharp image. The technique is similar to exposure blending, except instead of blending exposures, you would be blending focus. You can read about exposure blending here:
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/blended_exposures.shtml

[ridetwistyroads]

You can read about exposure blending here:
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/blended_exposures.shtml
Great reading, thanks for the link! :deal

[VivianG]

Thank you, moving back did help. I think that I need to read more on depth of field. Thank you for posting the link for the photshop help.