Need advice on getting "tack sharp" photos

I have long been amazed by some of you who are able to get truly tack sharp photos and the ability is so far, eluding me. ; For me, it's like the difference between watching regular tv and watching in HD, or a regular movie as opposed to a Blue Ray version. ; I so want to get better at taking photographs that are in razor sharp focus and would love any pointers. ; Here are two photographs of my furry little friends taken last week that I really like, but don't quite make the grade in the focus department, in my opinion. ; Any thoughts? ; I have seen photographs of squirrels where it looked like I could reach out and actually feel the fur.

 

Unfortunately Tim is right, glass is the first consideration in sharpness. ; But your 55-250 is pretty good as far as entry-level lenses go, though it is definitely sharper at the wide end than the long end.

Here are my suggestions:

First and foremost, stop down the aperture. ; I see on flickr that they were taken at the max aperture for the focal length (f/5.6). ; There isn't a lens in existence, no matter how much you spend, that is at maximum sharpness at maximum aperture size. ; The 55-250 is best at f/8.

Second, post-processing does wonders, but if you're looking for sharpness straight out of camera you should dig into your camera's settings and turn up the sharpness filter, especially when you're shooting on the long end of that lens

Lastly, unrelated to sharpness, but these are underexposed. ; It looks like the camera exposed for the bright background, so the subject is too dark. ; Exposure compensation, or perhaps center weighted or spot metering, is needed in this situation.

 

On at least one of my lenses I've stopped trying to close it down and normally shoot with it wide open. ; My admittedly limited testing with my 400 F5.6 (known to be quite sharp wide open) suggests that I can't see any different when I close it down. ; But I can't say my testing wasn't flawed, perhaps when I closed it down I lost whatever sharpness I gained to lens shake from having to use longer exposures. ; But I feel like I have seen sharpness gains from closing my 70-200F4 down to at least F5.6.

Even with my fairly good lenses I've still had inconsistent results, either I still don't "get it" or else sharpness isn't an exact science and there's an unavoidable element of unpredictability. ; It may be that the quality and direction of the light matters but I'm not yet taking that into account like I should.

It's been frustrating for me because I'm a sharpness fanatic, I've spent most of my shutter actuations on animals and I like getting extreme detail whether it be in feathers, fur or scales. ; But I still don't really know how well a picture will turn out until I look at it afterwards at home on the computer. ; Some times I think I'm taking fantastic pictures and they come out mediocre, other times a picture that I didn't think much of at all turns out to have potential.

I want to suggest you consider other areas of post processing too, not just sharpening. ; I remember you commented on the rubik's cube picture in another thread, about how it just jumps out at you. ; I think part of the impression of that was the intense colors, which I'm guessing were produced in post processing by boosting the saturation.


I've taken a whack at adjusting your first image, and I'm at least reasonably pleased with my result. ; With your permission I'll post it so you can get an idea of what I'm talking about. ; I'm not familiar with Aperture but I think you have access to more or less the same tools that I've used, although Aperture may handle a few things slightly differently.

 

Oh my gosh this was a wealth of information..WONDERFUL and SO appreciated. ; Thank you all very much! :-*

Tim, you never fail to get at the heart of something for me in a simple, easy to understand, clear fashion. ; I think I knew quickly that better lenses would help. ; It was one of my first posts a few weeks ago and everyone had great suggestions then, too. ; I hope technique and post production know how, will come with time, practice, and plenty of guidance here.

Code, ; thank you thank you thank you, for your feedback! ; I think I wasn't at all understanding what "stopping down the aperture" meant and I certainly didn't know it would help in gaining sharpness. ; I can't wait to try doing that! ; Also, I didn't realize the photos were underexposed but now I totally see that. ; I do that alot, I think...I have such a thing for bokeh...I'm always paying attention to the background. ; Silly, huh? ; Looks like I need to learn more about center weight and spot metering and pay more attention to my subject.

Dan, your posts always impress me so much. ; You have a way of giving me alot of technical information that is SO helpful, without making me feel like an idiot. ; I love Jeff's rubix cube photo (and actually pretty much every one of his photos - wow. ; If I could favorite his whole library, I would ) and appreciated that you remembered and then addressed that. ; I would absolutely love it if you would post the photos you adjusted and I thank you for doing that. ; It was pretty thoughtful.

I am learning so much and feeling very grateful for you all. ; Thank you again.

 

How much of a crop are your pictures? Tight crops can be a killer for sharpness.

 

Thanks for the kind words- ; I have to give a +1 for good glass- there really is no computer generated substitute. ; 200mm @ f2.8- 20% or so crop and no sharpening.

[expando]http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2722/4360840973_b6e9d471da_o.jpg[/expando]

 

Ooooooo Jeff! ; How did you do that really cool thing so that when someone hovers over your photo it expands in size? ; That is so neat! ; Another gorgeous photo. ; And you're welcome.

Zeagle, I'm not sure..I just cropped it until it looked right to me. ; hee hee

 

Expando- right next to the picture icon but with little arrows. ; Me like.

[expando]http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4028/4360847273_730af831d2_o.jpg[/expando]

 

I would be interested in seeing the original picture, so that we can compare it to the crop. Dan mentioned about editing the pic, could you share the RAW file? I like the shot, but I think some post processing magic could help you further

 

No problem Zeagle.. Soon as I get home I'll post the original photos. ; I'd love to hear what you think.

 

my .02 worth
1. good glass cannot be beat, ever, that's why as a cannon shopoter i always recommend someone spend their dollars on L grade glass, even if used, in good condition it flat out beat the consumer lens at same focal length and aperure setting. you can make do for a few years with an entry level body while you collect great glass.
2. f/8 and be there, there's a reason that saying came about, i try mightily to stay in that f/8-13 sweet spot on all my lenses, i usually only come off that and open up if it's a low light/no tripod situation
3. your stance, it's harder to correct this over the net, at tim's talks he always stresses a little demo on proper triangulated, balanced stance. pistol shooters and martial arts practitioners come to this easier that others, feet shoulder width apart, slightly bent at the knees, and one hand holding the camera body, the other UNDER the lens barrel if the barrel is long enough. not on each side of the body, that just makes sure the camera shakes in the same pattern as you do, all people shake, it just varies how much.
4. yeah you need to experiment with some post process/ unsharp mask, etc, this is best learned through books and practice, i heartily endorse scott kelby's books, i have several of them and really learn from his teaching style

 

Okay here is the untouched original jpeg file. ; I hope I did this right. ; Jeff...WAY cool expando thing. ; Me like too. :-* ; (ps...why does it come through sideways like that? ; I just didn't want to touch it in case rotating it messed up the originalness of it. ) ;

[expando]http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4062/4363843218_d38b6b174b_o.jpg[/expando]

Thanks guys. ; This is so fun!

ps...if this doesn't work for you, you're welcome to go get it off my Flickr page.

Gary, thank you for your thoughts too!

 

My God that squirrel is a MONSTER!

 

Justin, would you mind emailing me the photos you cleaned up? ; I would love that. ; You can get my email address off my profile. ; I don't really understand how uploading large files affects Tim's site and I wouldn't want to do anything bad. ; Should I take that photo off and just have folks go to my Flickr page to view it?

Thank you so much for the encouraging words. ; I'm just having a ball.

Jeff... ;D ; You so funny...

 

Thank you so much, Justin. ; It was nice of you to take the time to do it and is much appreciated.

 

Well now we've gotten into dealing with the original which is of course the best way to do it, but.. well, I did my fiddling with the downsampled version. ; I just wanted to try it out, to see what I could accomplish. ; Lest I seem too confident here I am NOT strong at post processing, this was a test to see if I could do it, not a plan to "show how it's done".

I'm giving two options of the same image, only the second uses any sharpening, just to try to make my point of focusing on things other than sharpness. ; This is actually fairly unlike me.. I'm a pixel peeper, and as Justin hinted that's often not considered a positive term. ; All I can say is us pixel peepers know it, but we are what we are. ; Also, actually, I'm none to sure of my sharpening approach, sharpening effectively can require a subtle touch and I don't do subtle. ; I drag sliders around until it looks good enough.

I'll try to give a play by play of what I did, but I don't know Aperture, the only thing I know about it is what I saw when I googled it last night and looked at a few screenshots that Apple had on their site. ; It looks like it presents a very similar interface to Adobe Lightroom, but.. I do most of my editing in Photoshop, which can handle things differently.

The first thing was tightening up the levels. ; A minor change, but the first step I usually take, it's the approach I learned in the photoshop class I took such a long time ago. ; For Aperture I think you fiddle with the exposure, black point, and brightness settings, the point is to try to stretch that histogram out, to make the brightest areas really bright and the darkest areas really dark. ; It can make a flat image look a lot more vibrant. ; Then I increased both the brightness and contrast.. um.. I don't know if that is the same thing as Aperture's brightness slider or not. ; Then I used the shadow/highlight adjustment to brighten up the squirrel and the platform it's standing on. ; I think I tend to overuse this feature, but it makes it so easy to do something that would otherwise be difficult for me and require a lot more finesse. ; Finally I boosted the saturation. ; Something I'm sure I'm prone to overdo, once you start increasing the color it's awfully hard to stop.

And for the second version I used a sharpening filter.

Once I was done I realized that I'd boosted the appearance of noise in the background. ; I only realized it after I was done and since it'd be a lot easier to deal with that by working on the original and shrinking it down as the second to last step and sharpening as the last (always sharpen last, one of the basic rules of post processing workflow) I'm just leaving it. ; But yeah, that's not good.

So, uh.. there it is, for better or for worse. ; To my eye it looks pretty good, but I have the hardest time judging these things. ; I may well have boosted the color to unrealistic levels, but without having seen the squirrel with my own eyes I was more shooting for a pleasing appearance than realism.

And one last thing, that whole expanding picture effect is darned cool. ; I've GOT to try that out. ; I think I have a flickr account.. ; I registered for it and never posted a single picture.

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