Ever wondered why your photos were all soft?

ancient_mariner

ancient_mariner

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Yesterday I uploaded a bunch of images taken last week and over the weekend, and as I started working through them and culling the ones that weren't sharp I realised they ALL weren't sharp.

About 3 weeks ago I bought a Sony Carl Zeiss 16-80 zoom on ebay, but it had a mechanical fault & so returned it to the seller. These were the first images I'd taken since sending the lens back, and even though they were made using the standard Minolta 50mm f1.7 prime, compared to the Zeiss zoom they were all soft enough for me to want to reject them. I have a nasty feeling that my minimum desirable standard of lens just got expensive. :runaway:
 
There seem to be few pre digital lenses that are as good on digital as they seemed on film. However we never pixel peeped or even cared.
Even lenses fitted to the better compacts are astonishingly good.
 
I just make sure my desirable standards are kept low :cool:
 
are you sure you haven't knocked your eyepiece focussing?
 
Terrywoodenpic said:
There seem to be few pre digital lenses that are as good on digital as they seemed on film. However we never pixel peeped or even cared.
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Yup, if film users made 5 foot wide prints and viewed them from 12" away then they'd be complaining as well. And we'd all call them silly people. But huge hoards of people on the interwebs complain that their images look soft when viewed at 100%.
 
I don't pixel peep and I now use cameras with no AA filter. Even before this change I was happy with sharpness on A3+ prints after a drop of USM when necessary.
 
I usually take multiple images of a single subject, then pixel-peep to help select which to keep based on sharpness among other factors. It was at the image selection stage that I noticed the lack of sharpness.

Byker - the eyepiece wouldn't make a difference because the plane of focus passed through the subject - there should have been *some* parts that were sharp(er). TBH I think this says more about the 50mm lens (recognised as not being a great lens) than anything else.
 
hollis_f said:
Yup, if film users made 5 foot wide prints and viewed them from 12" away then they'd be complaining as well.
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That would depend on the size of film they were using. A five foot wide print from an 10" x 8" negative is only a 6 x enlargement.


Steve.
 
I think that the quest for "sharpness" sometimes borders on the pathological. Something akin to hypochondria where people look so hard for something being wrong they start to pay disproportionate attention to things that most people would barely perceive.
 
hollis_f said:
Yup, if film users made 5 foot wide prints and viewed them from 12" away then they'd be complaining as well. And we'd all call them silly people. But huge hoards of people on the interwebs complain that their images look soft when viewed at 100%.
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I have no complaints about the sharpness of the results from the film-era Canon FD primes that I use daily with my Sony A7, even when pixel peeping, and that includes slightly lower end examples like the FDn 35mm f/2.8. Indeed, I'm often surprised how good they are when subjected to the intense scrutiny of 24 megapixels of digital imaging. If a picture is blurry, it's usually down to camera shake or missed focus.
 
ghoti said:
I think that the quest for "sharpness" sometimes borders on the pathological. Something akin to hypochondria where people look so hard for something being wrong they start to pay disproportionate attention to things that most people would barely perceive.
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Image creation requires combining a lot of different things, but sharpness isn't something you can add later in PP. It's probably been discussed to death here several times, but it's always better to have it available than not. One style of photography I attempt is selective focusing, to draw the eye to the subject while rendering other objects of lower interest. Naturally this only works if you have a reasonably sharp lens. Sure we can do landscapes at f8 all the time, but that's not always useful.

But sure, if you're going for a softer image that doesn't rely on retaining detail for impact then sharpness isn't important.
 
ancient_mariner said:
Image creation requires combining a lot of different things, but sharpness isn't something you can add later in PP. It's probably been discussed to death here several times, but it's always better to have it available than not. One style of photography I attempt is selective focusing, to draw the eye to the subject while rendering other objects of lower interest. Naturally this only works if you have a reasonably sharp lens. Sure we can do landscapes at f8 all the time, but that's not always useful.

But sure, if you're going for a softer image that doesn't rely on retaining detail for impact then sharpness isn't important.
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I'm not saying sharpness is unimportant, I'm saying that some people obsess over negligible improvements in the sharpness of their subject. I would say the same about f/8 landscapes and selective focus photography with extremely shallow DoF.

I'd argue that if you have to pixel-peep to notice a problem, that problem is likely not worth the frustration.
 
ancient_mariner said:
Yesterday I uploaded a bunch of images taken last week and over the weekend, and as I started working through them and culling the ones that weren't sharp I realised they ALL weren't sharp.
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Please reveal your secret.. I reject duplicates to retain the best, I reject mis-timed shots that miss the subject, I reject shots that just plain fail to grab my attention, but I've never suceeded in reaching the level of photography where I'll reject purely on sharpness.. ;)

(sharpness is over-rated)
 
I use a lot of film era primes but good ones such as the Minolta 100/2

The 50 1.7 isn't a great lens and the zeiss 16-80 is very sharp for a zoom lens and at f5.6 is very good across the whole frame.
 
The Minolta 50mmF1.7 is a very nice lens, I've used it on a sony A450 DSLR ... but compared to SHARP lenses my copy didn't even get into the same room until it was down to F2.8 ...
but at F2 its great for portraits. F1.7 was a bit too soft, and that means really soft.
 
It seems odd that we spend hundreds or thousands of pounds on a camera and lens and the apparent sharpness of the picture finally depends on how far we push a couple of sliders.
 
courtany said:
It seems odd that we spend hundreds or thousands of pounds on a camera and lens and the apparent sharpness of the picture finally depends on how far we push a couple of sliders.
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it doesn't - if the photo is basically sharp in camera it can be polished in pp , but if its unsharp in camera through poor technique no amount of pp is going to render it sharp - you can't polish a turd
 
Alastair said:
Please reveal your secret.. I reject duplicates to retain the best, I reject mis-timed shots that miss the subject, I reject shots that just plain fail to grab my attention, but I've never suceeded in reaching the level of photography where I'll reject purely on sharpness.. ;)

(sharpness is over-rated)
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I usually take multiple images of a single subject, then pixel-peep to help select which to keep based on sharpness among other factors.
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:)

I'm still developing the best way for me to select images in Lightroom, and after weeding out the obvious failures in a fairly similar fashion to you, I'll then find reasons to select one (or more) from replicates. After composition, sharpness is an easy criteria to use. I'm no hero with a camera, but rather trying to be concise instead of rambly with my opening post.
 
ancient_mariner said:
:)

I'm still developing the best way for me to select images in Lightroom, and after weeding out the obvious failures in a fairly similar fashion to you, I'll then find reasons to select one (or more) from replicates. After composition, sharpness is an easy criteria to use. I'm no hero with a camera, but rather trying to be concise instead of rambly with my opening post.
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Selecting shots for ultimate sharpness seems pointless.
There is perhaps no choice but to throw out grossly unsharp shots for what ever reason, misfocus or shake.
However even that criteria can be reduced by the uniqueness of the shot or its importance.

I would put sharpness way down the list, in any selection process for important shots.
However for easily repeatable shots the position might be reversed.

I tend to keep almost every thing in light room, except perhaps for gross errors or shots I should never have bothered to take in the first place. The problem with selecting at that stage, is that criteria and importance can change over time, and ones discarded can not be recovered.
 
The CZ16-80 is a nice lens, I was in some ways sad to let my copy go when I moved to FF, but there were still plenty of times when I did have the CZ that I switched to my Minolta 50 f/1.7 as I wanted the wider aperture (for restricting DOF or just low light).

When you are making comparisons, are you comparing like for like?
As has already been mentioned, stopping down the 50 to f/2.8 can make quite a difference - and at that point it is still faster than the CZ.
Were you comparing the 50 wide open to the CZ stopped down a notch?
 
They were both stopped down a little, Jonathan. It's possible that the 50 1.7 I own isn't a great copy, and it's certainly not breath-takingly sharp at any aperture, so probably one to keep by for when I need either more light or shallowest possible depth of field, rather than to view it as a prime lens of choice.
 
I bet most of my photos are considered soft but its never bothered me! I usually open all my photos in preview and just flick through them, choose the ones I like and only then import them into Lightroom. Sometimes ill have a few shots of the same thing but I never look at the sharpness really, there will be minor changes in them and whichever one I think looks best I bring into Lightroom.
I also almost always used to shoot wide open with my X100 which apparently isnt very sharp wide open, I never noticed otherwise though to be honest!
 
I used to wonder this and consequently ended up suffering from GAS, in search of the Holy Grail. I then realised that in reality all my images (that were taken correctly) were sharp under normal situations and it was only pixel peeping to the nth level that showed anything different. Now I am much more content and in most cases, basic RAW processing and sharpening on export is all I do
 
ChrisHeathcote said:
Now I am much more content and in most cases, basic RAW processing and sharpening on export is all I do
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I don't sharpen most of the time either, other than the standard amount lightroom applies when you first import an image. But something I've started to ask myself is "how would this look if it were 30" X 20" for hanging on a wall?" Few of my images are ever likely to end up in that state, but I want to be able to shoot so that they could be. And for me, an image only needs to be as sharp as doesn't spoil the photo, so some subjects could very happily be a bit soft, while for others anything less than pin-sharp isn't acceptable, and for still more, the contrast between some parts being soft and some sharp is a part of what makes the image. Some images I have begun to deliberately blur or soften in PP, but that is a choice I want available.
 
I blame the adoption of HDTV at home. We used to be happy with our old black and white TV sets with the old Doctor Who, Raymond Baxter and the frickin' Flower Pot men.
 
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Assess them only when you print them and only assess the print, there's no real need to discard for sharpness pre-print.
 
But if you're assessing it for 30"x20"printing when you rarely print larger than 12"x8" then think of the wasted expense involved in taking the images you're rejecting on a criteria unlikely to ever be relevant.

I'll process an image as best I can, but I'll add images to a bulk order to DSCL and have the printed at anything up to 18"x12" just to see how they look printed. Because pixel-peeping is not a fair assessment of how an image will look when printed - almost always the image looks better on paper than the screen. So most people will be rejecting in error when considering sharpness.
 
Alastair said:
Assess them only when you print them and only assess the print, there's no real need to discard for sharpness pre-print.
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Seems a bit late then, especially if you hope to sell them at any stage (and even if not) and while I agree you can't always tell how something will look printed, there's a fair chance that if it's weak on screen then it will be weak printed too. *To me* it seems sensible to weed out the duffers at the beginning rather than the end, but each to their own.
 
Alastair said:
But if you're assessing it for 30"x20"printing when you rarely print larger than 12"x8" then think of the wasted expense involved in taking the images you're rejecting on a criteria unlikely to ever be relevant.
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^ This. Too many people are obsessed with sharpness when they never actually print large enough to even notice that sharpness when it's printed.. then they also stick it online at around 1200 pixels where it's even less relevant.

I'd like to see images from the lenses concerned. I bet at anything up to A3 you can't really tell when printed.
 
This was meant to be a light hearted comment, but instead it's gone a bit serious. I don't have any A/B images for direct comparison, and anyway photobucket re-sizes everything down to 1024 max on the longest side, as does TP uploads, so a meaningful comparison isn't going to happen.

Guess it also comes down to what we're happy with personally. Yes, I can get away with quite a lot of softeness on a websize image, but *I still know it's there* and it makes me unhappy about the picture IF I wanted it sharp.
 
Sharp - Schmarp!
If we wanted sharp, we'd wipe the ear-smeg off our 50Mp smartphone cameras before shoving it through instagram to fix everything. LOL!
 
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ancient_mariner said:
Yesterday I uploaded a bunch of images taken last week and over the weekend, and as I started working through them and culling the ones that weren't sharp I realised they ALL weren't sharp.

About 3 weeks ago I bought a Sony Carl Zeiss 16-80 zoom on ebay, but it had a mechanical fault & so returned it to the seller. These were the first images I'd taken since sending the lens back, and even though they were made using the standard Minolta 50mm f1.7 prime, compared to the Zeiss zoom they were all soft enough for me to want to reject them. I have a nasty feeling that my minimum desirable standard of lens just got expensive. :runaway:
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you should have bought mine it produces Tack Sharp images as you'd expect from a Zeiss lens - I have decided to keep this lens now :D:D:D:D
 
Lez325 said:
you should have bought mine it produces Tack Sharp images as you'd expect from a Zeiss lens - I have decided to keep this lens now :D:D:D:D
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Don't blame you one bit! The one I had has been returned & is apparently now with Sony. If it's fixed OK then I may well buy it back again, because it's a lovely lens - really appreciate the edge to edge sharpness and the lack of flare & CA.
 
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