Do all digital SLR's take a slightly out of focus shot?

[ksmattfish]

So do all digital cameras take a slightly out of focus or fuzzie shot and therefore need a bit of sharpening?

The term "out of focus" implies operator error or AF malfunction to me. It's my opinion that correctly focused, but unsharpened photos from most DSLRs are slightly soft, and can use a little sharpening in post-processing. Most DSLRs apply some in-camera sharpening when shooting jpegs. You might try adjusting yours to suit your taste. I find the same is true when scanning film; I need to apply sharpening to the scan to get the sharpness I'd expect from a straight optical print.

That said, correctly focused photos from a DSLR should look pretty good as prints even without sharpening. As Big Mike said, looking at your image files at 100% is like looking at a print with a magnifying glass. I find viewing them at 50% or 66% is closer to what I'll see in a print 10"x15" or smaller.

There are plenty of other influences on the sharpness of a photo though: zoom vs. prime lens, hand held shutter speed, etc.... I've been disappointed with my Canon 20D auto-focus. With apertures smaller than f/4 it does a pretty good job, but with larger apertures than f/4 it's often off a hair; which is the difference between sharp eyes, and sharp ears or nose. I'm not a big fan of AF anyway, so my AF technique may be lacking too. I put manual focusing screens in my DSLRs, and turned the AF off.

 

[DeepSpring]

I put manual focusing screens in my DSLRs, and turned the AF off.

Can I ask what that is? Because I am also someone who keeps it on manual and seldom touches the AF

 

[Rob]

Can I ask what that is? Because I am also someone who keeps it on manual and seldom touches the AF

With manual cameras and most film SLRs there is a bit of ground glass whose appearance changes when the focus is just right. DSLRs all have auto focus and are mainly supplied with a plain viewfinder.

For about £30 you can buy a bit of ground glass which does the same thing for a DSLR.

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1019&message=14612329

Rob

 

[Hair Bear]

Great feed back

Its a possibility that the scanner opperator is applying a sharped mask to the images or his software is by default.

When I have had contract scanning done for publication all my suppliers know not to sharpen the images in anyway as I don't like it and they all tend to over sharpen IMO.

So I get them raw and alter them myself.

With Snappy Snap I have never thought to ask them about sharpening so it may already be on the file when I get it.

I did sharpen the digital file and it did improve it.

Still not convinced I can afford the D80 but working towards gettting it any way. Jessops having interest free!!! < need to be able to take pictures with my current set up 1st! LOL

 

[THORHAMMER]

its easy to spot the piece of hair on her forehead that was blurry from the wind blowing it... You were probably shooting a 15th of a second too slow for perfect sharpness....

 

[Hair Bear]

its easy to spot the piece of hair on her forehead that was blurry from the wind blowing it... You were probably shooting a 15th of a second too slow for perfect sharpness....

And the second pic I posted was taken with a flash so would have stopped any hair movement?

 

[THORHAMMER]

yes, but also what i mean is you were just barely too slow shutter speed to totally freeze her... if you had upped the iso a little you would have nailed it perfect.....Or opened the aperature a little....

 

[Hair Bear]

Noobie question Thorn but is the upping the ISO going from 200 to 100 or from 200 to 400?

 

[Hair Bear]

What Camera have a review of the D80 this issue and a couple of images to download from their web site.

One pic is of a womans face and it has similar problems looking very sightly out of focus, see link

http://www.whatdigitalcamera.com/gallery/Nikon-D80

Again I feel to my eye there is lots of detail in the shot, some of it very fine. Both images looked much better with a little sharpening.

Is it to do with how the hair is made of lots of little pixels and therefore look slightly fuzzy?

The downlaod image is also in print and looks OK.