Camera Shake

TheLogan · Jul 21, 2009

oh, thats right, the last two were shot with my sigma 70-300 macro. my bad. What do you think the problem might be, musicaleCA? I just want sharper photo's

musicaleCA · Jul 21, 2009

Maybe it's a DoF issue? Have you tried stopping down the aperture further to get less things sharper?

The Sigma you have has rather mixed performance in terms of sharpness; borders suffer a lot at 300mm (especially at f/5.6, not really recovering much until f/11). Take a look at this site and note the MTF tables on page 2.

TheLogan · Jul 21, 2009

I understand the sigma lens isn't sharp, but I mean the first two pictures that are from my 50 fixed

musicaleCA · Jul 21, 2009

Honestly, the first looks sharp enough to me. The second looks noisy; that may be where the sharpness is being lost. Was it underexposed at all?

TheLogan · Jul 21, 2009

maybe its because it was such a large crop, this is close to the original image. same distance I had to shoot it from

icassell · Jul 21, 2009

Are you shooting in RAW? If so, you almost certainly need to use some sharpening as there is no filter added in the camera. Looks more like lack of sharpness than shake to my eye.

TheLogan · Jul 21, 2009

I am shooting in RAW because I was told it was better. What can I do to sharpen the Image? or should I not shoot in RAW?

Baaaark · Jul 21, 2009

Maybe with such a shallow DOF, you should switch to spot metering. You might be off a tad when you're trying to focus.

Edit: I didn't mean spot metering. I meant center-point autofocus.

TheLogan · Jul 21, 2009

what is spot metering?

icassell · Jul 21, 2009

Aha ... if you are shooting in RAW and not sharpening, that IS an issue. Most post-processing programs have sharpening filters in them.

There are many tutorials on the web ... here is one example:

Sharpening 101

When you shoot in JPEG, filters (including sharpening) are added by the camera. The advantage of RAW is that you get the un-adulterated data to work with. This can, however be a disadvantage as it makes you do some work yourself.

TheLogan · Jul 21, 2009

So would you still recommend shooting in RAW or does it make a huge difference from JPEG?

icassell · Jul 21, 2009

Well, I think you will find that most experienced photographers shoot in RAW, but it is a matter of taste. RAW gives you the full data-set of your sensor allowing you to do all sorts of post-processing that is no longer available to you if you shoot in JPEG. For that reason, I recommend it. On the other hand, there is a learning curve. You have to do yourself in post-processing what your camera does for you when you shoot JPEG. Much of this can be programmed as actions, but it takes a bit of playing around.

I am just saying that your 'camera-shake' issue, might not be camera-shake at all but rather it may be due to this lack of sharpening of your RAW image. Take a couple and go back and try to sharpen them and see what happens.

Baaaark · Jul 21, 2009

TheLogan said:
what is spot metering?

Sorry. I didn't mean spot metering. I meant spot autofocus. WHere instead of seeing the whole photo and guessing what would be the right focus point, you force it to focus on the exact center of the photo and go from there. With a shallower depth of field, the former choice may result in some fuzzy moments.

I know my camera is retarded when it comes to autofocus. It seriously has mental computer issues with it, and I have to use spot autofocus, and go from there to make sure.

BTW spot metering is where you let the camera determine how bright or dim to make the photo by ONLY looking at the exact center. But as I said before, this has NOTHING to do with your problem...lol.

TheLogan · Jul 21, 2009

So how do I go about changing it to spot focusing?

And I'll try sharpening my photos after reading over that website you linked me, icassell

musicaleCA · Jul 21, 2009

*facepalm* I totally didn't think of that (images not being sharpened if shot in RAW). Gah, it's become second-nature for me as my last step.

TheLogan said:
So how do I go about changing it to spot focusing?

And I'll try sharpening my photos after reading over that website you linked me, icassell

Read your manual. It should go over the different metering and focusing modes. Though for the XS, it's pretty similar to the XSi body, so it should be as simple as hitting that button on the upper right (the rightmost button, I think, or at least the one with a label that has a box and five rectangles inside it), and then using the dial to go through the various focus points. On my 450D (XSi...what a silly name, honestly), it's just a press of that button and dialing to the right one notch.