Canon T1i- 50mm f 1/4 lens- having probs

[foodiephotog]

Hi- I am new and please don't laugh, but I am not good at understanding my camera and its lens. I bought a 50mm f 1.4 and sometimes I get good shots, sometimes I don't. My question is- how do you get the lens to focus on everything in the frame? If I am shooting a bowl with soup, it will keep on focusing on the edge of the bowl and soften everything up. I have played around with the aperture, but it doesn't help. Can anyone help a newbie/idiot like me, please? Thank you.

[VTphotog]

Fast lenses are nice when you don't have much light, or when you want to blur a background in a portrait. For close-ups, such as you are talking about, you will need to use Av mode, and set an aperture of f/8 or smaller, in order to get everything in focus. The camera is going to try to focus on edges with a lot of contrast, if you leave it to itself. You probably need to either select the center focus point only, or use manual focus and set the focal point yourself.
The smaller aperture may require that you have more light.

brian