RONNIE G. CAMPBELL |
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Many of My Pictures Aren't Sharp!
I use a Canon EOS Digital Rebel with a 28 to 80mm AF lens. A lot of my pics are not sharp My ISO/ASA is 400. My shutter speed is 400, aperture 11. What is wrong?
April 15, 2004
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Jon Close |
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Could be any of a number of reasons, such as: a) poor focus technique; b) most zoom lenses like the 28-80 are not as sharp at wide apertures (f/3.5-5.6) as they are at f/8 or f/11*; c) too slow a shutter speed that causes blurring from camera shake or from subject movement*; d) higher ISO settings tend to capture less detail and more noise than ISO 100; e) lower resolution JPEG settings capture less detail than RAW; f) underexposure will result in a loss of detail and contrast; g) all of the above are amplified if you make large (bigger than 4"x6") prints or print at less than ~300 dpi. *(b) and *(c) are listed for completeness; they do not necessarily apply in your case since you stated you shot at 1/400 and f/11.
April 15, 2004
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Michael Kaplan |
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As well as the above, Canon correctly chose to lower their in-camera sharpening so that the photographer can do their own sharpening after the fact. Most of the time, pictures straight out of the camera are not as sharp as those from consumer P&S cameras. Try using USM (Unsharp Mask) available in most photo editing programs like Photoshop Elements, listed under the Filters menu/Sharpen/Unsharp Mask. There is no perfect setting to give you. You can try different values until you see what you like. Ask 10 people what setting they use and likely you'll get 10 different settings. Try as a start 250/1.0/0 then play with the numbers and check out the preview till you see what you like. You can learn a bit more about USM by doing a search on google or some other search site. You can read an article here as well:
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/understanding-series/understanding-usm.shtml
Michael Kaplan
Canon EOS-10D
http://www.pbase.com/mkaplan
April 20, 2004
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