Soft Focus

jaydee

jaydee

Suspended / Banned
Messages
67
Name
Justin Welch
Edit My Images
Yes
I had my first solo photo shoot last night and all the photos seem to have come out with slightly soft focus and not pin sharp. I used canon 40 with both 70-300 and 17-85 kit lens. Has anyone got advice for the me?

(will try to post an image on here soon but if you want I could email you a sample of theoutcomes. - Just drop me a PM)

Thanks
Jay Dee
 
EdinburghGary said:
Are you looking at RAW files or JPEGS? Apparently you always need to sharpen RAW's.

Gary.
Click to expand...

Your RAW converter should sharpen them as you cant convert directly from a colour filter array (normally Bayer) to pixels. The camera will do this for you (including the sharpening) when you record as JPEG
 
mikezs said:
Your RAW converter should sharpen them as you cant convert directly from a colour filter array (normally Bayer) to pixels. The camera will do this for you (including the sharpening) when you record as JPEG
Click to expand...

OK thanks for the info. Why I asked if he had shot in JPEG at all, if only raw, then I am guessing he wont see any sharpening yet.

Gary.
 
What aperture settings did you use?

Neither of those lenses are spectacularly sharp wide open and diffraction would set it if stopped down too far.

Bob
 
Thanks for your replies. I shot in RAW only and my aperture was (with diffirent lighting) 5.6 and max 13. I'll have a look tonight after converting from RAW to JPEG (or TIFF).

Re: Neither of those lenses are spectacularly sharp wide open and diffraction would set it if stopped down too far.

I know these are not the best lenses so what lens would you suggest for portraiture and studio (portfolio) shoots?
 
At f/8 those will do a decent job for portraits. Otherwise, you're best off with primes. What sort of shoots do you want to do? I use:
300mm for headshots
105mm for head and shoulders
50mm for half length/some full length
35mm for full length.

At least in Nikon land, manual focus primes are very cheap, very very good quality and easy to come by. Someone else will have to tell you about the best way to equip yourself for Canon. No need to be afraid of manual focus!

You may need to do more sharpening than default for your RAW shots. Depends on your processor and medium of display really.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top