struggling with focus

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Nickzx6r

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(2nd novice mistake I realise this should be in the critique section - would a mod kindly move it for me if they get chance?? :bonk:)

Hi all,

I've had a few different cameras over the last few years (500d, 550d, d5000 now a D90) but have never really done much with them and now i'd like to pick it back up again.

My main focus is pics of the kids.

I've taken a few pics over the last few days and am struggling to get the pics sharp. I'm using different lenses (18-55 vr, 50mm and a 55-200 all nikon) and am seeing probs across them all. Not all pics are bad but there are more bad then good.

I'm pretty sure its me and my novice approach causing it but have included a few below that i took today to see if there are any pointers you could give me and as to whether there are any hardware issues you may spot. The outside pics were single point af with af-s and the interior i had changed to af-a. They were all taken on the 55-200mm lens. I always try and get the eyes in the autofocus square.

Any thoughts gratefully received

right - 1st novice error - im trying to fix the red crosses - fixed :clap:

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They dont look too bad for sharpness, they would look at lot nicer if the background was less messy/distracting.

Try and use the 50mm with f number around 2.2-3.0 and try and get your shutter speed at 125 sec or faster and see how you go.
 
I take it you're shooting JPEGs? If so, check your Picture Controls. Whichever one you're using, you should be able to edit it to make it produce sharper shots. These photos are acceptably sharp, IMO, but wouldn't look any worse with a little more in-camera sharpening.
 
Thanks for the feedback. (I know what your saying about background but composition went out of the window whilst I was trying to get the sharpness lol)

Perhaps I am aiming for too sharp a picture?? My idea of acceptable sharp is that you can zoom in and see the eyelashes, that's what I check on every pic I take. Should I relax a little on that??

When you say check picture settings can I check what you mean?? I have mine set to fine and I shoot in raw too, I can't see anyway of making them any better. You mentioned in camera sharpening, is there a setting to make the camera auto sharpen a little?? (I'd prefer to hit the right shot myself if I'm honest as I have found sharpening in photoshop produces a slightly grainy effect although admittedly this is probably my inabilities at that too :-( )

Thanks for your tips do far though (I'll have a play with my 50mm today)

Nick
 
Kids can be quite hard as they never stay still.....

I normaly try and keep my shutter speed at 250 sec with my daugther or there is movment blur. This is with a 50mm, remember to keep a check on your shutter speed.

pic 2 you had 160mm and 1/60 which is too slow.

I would think your 50mm is the sharpest lens to play with. I would guess maxium sharpness with this lens is around 4.0-5.6. I dont know Nikon gear.

If you shot Raw try unsharpen mask in photoshop.

I might sell my KTM 625smc this year for ZX6R 2005/6 (636) model.
 
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Nickzx6r said:
When you say check picture settings can I check what you mean?? I have mine set to fine and I shoot in raw too, I can't see anyway of making them any better. You mentioned in camera sharpening, is there a setting to make the camera auto sharpen a little??
Click to expand...

I don't know your D90, but I'll tell you how I'd do it on my D5100 and you can see if it works on yours. Press the Menu key, go to the Shooting Menu (2nd from the top), go down to Set Picture Control, press the OK button. Scroll down to whichever Picture Control you want to use then press the right arrow to get to the sub-menu. In there you can change Sharpening, Contrast, Brightness, Saturation, and Hue. Note that this only changes those settings for JPEGs. A NEF is a RAW file and is simply the luminance data for all of the photosites on the sensor with no processing. If you shoot RAW, expect to do a fair bit of processing to get your pictures the way your native JPEGs come out, possibly including a small amount of pre-process sharpening as well as some sharpening for priint or the web at the end of all of your other processing.

Nickzx6r said:
(I'd prefer to hit the right shot myself if I'm honest as I have found sharpening in photoshop produces a slightly grainy effect although admittedly this is probably my inabilities at that too :-( )
Click to expand...

The grainy effect possibly comes from sharpening all of the picture, including the noise. Unsharp Mask might produce more of this effect than other methods. You could try a High-Pass sharpen. I think it's on the same menu in CS as in Elements (which I use): Filter, Other, High Pass. How many pixels to use for the Radius depends on how big your photos are in pixel size. For modern cameras, try 2 or 3. Once you've applied it, set the Blend Mode to Overlay.

The way High Pass works it that it finds the strong, contrasty edges in your picture and filters everything else out. With a low pixel radius, it should filter out most of the noise.

You could also check out 3rd party noise reduction and sharpening tools such as Topaz DeNoise and Topaz Detail, which are plugins for Photoshop CS, Elements, Lightroom, iPhoto, Aperture, PaintShop Pro, and other post-processing programs.
 
Thanks both, I'll get my camera out in a bit and have a play with some of these. I shoot in jpeg and raw (only because I read somewhere that it's good practice, not sure why)

Tris: I hadn't noticed it had slowed down so much, 1st thing I should've checked really, I'll keep my eye on that. (my username is slightly old now as I have a blade now, but I did have an 05 zx6r (underseat exhaust) when they came out and was a lot if fun, I don't think you'll be disappointed :-)

Thanks again for the pointers, I'll let you both know how I get on
 
Why not try shooting something static - kids move around - a lot, and therefore what you could be seeing is slight motion blur in the "bad" shots.

for kids, I'd try to keep the shutterspeed above the rule of thumb (1.5x focal length on a crop camera like the D90) - as suggested above try 1/125, higher if possible...
 
Hi all,

Just wanted to say thanks for the pointers above. I've been having a play and immediately seen a vast improvement in the pics. (I've shot some static stuff and proved my gear is a1 too). But remembering the shutter speed has nailed it I think, I was seeing motion blur over out of focus I think. One of the basics that I seem to have forgotten in my lack of use over the last few months.

I've upped the in camera sharpening a touch too and I'm very pleased.

Can't upload results at mo as I'm on my iPhone but when I get to pc I'll show them

Thanks again

Nick
 
For the first and second photo there seems to be a hint of red-eye. I don't know if what I'm saying is redundant, but don't use direct flash and certainly not on-camera flash. Unfortunately flikr strips out the exif data so there's no way for us to check from there, but I would second the notion of using faster shutter speeds. Otherwise I see nothing wrong with the pictures apart from basic composition errors such as having people in the background. It would make the last two pictures much nicer if the lady (wife?) in the blue coat were omitted from the shot, or included as a main subject. I'm quite a fan of the old adage that if something doesn't add to a shot, it only detracts from it!
 
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