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Clear, crisp photos
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I just recently started shooting completely manually, and i've gotten a lot better at working with light in regards to aperture and shutter speed, but i'm still having problems with focus. I recently took some engagement pictures for a couple of friends, and they didn't turn out as well as i'd hoped. I shoot with a Canon Rebel XT, and I alternated between AutoFocus Point Selection on the cross keys, and the other setting which lets the camera choose what to focus on. When i used the cross keys, I could only focus on one of their faces at a time, but when i used complete auto focus, it seemed to focus on the wrong thing.
I have the camera itself set on AI Focus AF. Is there anything you could tell me to help out with this? Do crisp pictures have to do with a smaller aperture or focusing method or a combination of both?
I'll post one of the pictures when i get home.
Thanks!
Posted at 8:50PM, 25 July 2009 PDT
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[http://www.flickr.com/photos/thepinkfog/3761342606/]
Here's one of the pictures I was talking about. Haven't done any editing yet, but the focus is not what i'd like it to be. Tips anybody?
Posted 35 months ago.
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Sharpness can be quite elusive. There are lots of things which contribute to it, so I'll try and list the main cause of soft images:
- missed focus
- camera shake
- too narrow depth of field (especially a problem when focus is missed)
- lens aberrations
The last two of these can be helped by stopping down the aperture. Doing so increases the depth of field and stops the light from passing through the edges of the lens which are more prone to softness-inducing errors. The sweet spot for sharpness in aperture is about f8-11. The problem then is that you also can loose the artistic effect of a nice blurry background.
Reducing camera shake is important, so having a higher shutter speed is helpful. A good rule of thumb is to set the shutter speed to be the same as your lens focal length. If you're shooting with a 50mm, don't go slower than 1/50th sec, for a 200mm lens, no less than 1/200th sec - don't forget to factor in your lens' crop factor.
One other tip that I love and see few people mention. Many photos, especially those shot at wider apertures show chromatic aberration - kind of a colour ghosting. Your RAW processing software should have a way to correct that - Lightroom has sliders for CA in the "Detail" panel. Fixing CA can actually have a marked efect on an image's sharpness.
In short, shoot fast, stop down and process well. If you can't do any of these for creative reasons, then be aware of the trade-off you're making, so you can do what you can to minimise softness.
Posted 34 months ago.
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... and buying a new lens or camera should be your very very last option. :)
Posted 34 months ago.
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Yes I agree of neil, at first time I bought my 60d, I have same problem with blur image, all my pic are blured, at first I think that theres a problem with my camera I read many issue about the 60d, but thanks got for people who help me, I suggest that when shooting you have to practice metering & exposure & specially the shutter speed, avoid shutter slow than a 1/4 use higer than that like 30 or higher during outside shooting & use a center weighted average metering or partial metering, look at your view finder the exposure not go high or to low or always at the middle but not always, if to much light during outside make your exposure going to -1 to get a nice color of image or a nice contrast & my tecnique use a filter polarized you can get a good and crisp image, I hope you help this..goodluck! ...
Posted 7 months ago.
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I agree with . New equipment is an option, and sometimes the best one, but almost never the only one, and usually not the first one. Try everything else you can first, because when we're talking about image quality, it's not the camera, or even the lens, that matters. What matters is the light and the photographer.
What Mr. Creek had to say is pretty much dead-on. Don't forget that the longer the lens, the thinner the DOF for a given aperture. Say you're shooting with either an old 35mm film camera, or a full-frame sensor DLSR. You have a scene in front of you you would like to photograph. You have a 24mm lens and a 50mm lens. At f/5.6, focused on something 10 feet away, you would have twice the DOF with the 24mm as you would with the 50mm. This is even more profound on a DSLR with a cropped sensor, such as yours. So if you're shooting with a 100mm lens (150mm equiv. on your camera), the DOF at f/5.6 will be three times thinner than a 50mm on film.
Also, if you find that you're shooting with your aperture as wide-open as you want it to be, and you're shutter speed is still too slow, bump up your ISO. I know that on some cameras this can be a death sentence for image quality, but usually sliding some sliders around in LR can clear most of the noise up. And there's always converting to B&W, which can give the photos that grungy, high-speed B&W film look.
And lastly, there's always the focus-recompose method. I'm only thinking of this because I'm not too clear on what exactly happened (what the focal length of your lens was, where the focus was vs where it is, etc.), but if you're using AF, having trouble keeping focus on your subject AND getting good angles where they're not just plastered in the middle of the frame, then you can always give the shutter release a half-squeeze, attain focus, hold the shutter release down halfway, recompose, and then shoot the image. Or, if you're lucky enough, you might be able to program a button on the back of the camera to act as an AF button, thereby making it much easier to hold focus at a certain distance. Check out this Flickr Discussion on how and why to do it on your 350D (Rebel XT).
Oh, and don't ever use the complete auto-focus. You're camera is a tool, one you use to create the images you want. You don't want it thinking for you (and, thereby, making the images for you), you want it to do only what you tell it to! In my opinion, you're camera should be allowed to set the shutter speed (or aperture if you prefer), and that's it.
OH! And, if you don't already, shoot in RAW. There are numerous reasons why you should, not the least of which is NEVER HAVING TO WORRY ABOUT WHITE BALANCE AGAIN. That, alone, made it worth it for me, but combine that fact with the massive ability to edit your files (and even pull them from the brink of ruin if need be) it affords you, and the fact that storage is becoming cheaper every year, really gives no reason not to shoot in RAW. Of course, if you already do, good on ya!
Hope something in this long-winded reply helped!
Posted 4 months ago.
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