Fishing Boat C&C

fiveoboy01 · Aug 21, 2009

shortpballer said:
Whenever I take pictures like this, with a larger depth of field things look more detailed. You end up having to keep the shutter open longer, which in turn always makes for more detailed, more 3d looking images. They look less flat.

?

The shutter speed has nothing to do with depth of field, and a slower shutter will make the image blurry if anything...

I am just curious... For those of you who point out that the focus is soft on images, what should one do to better the focus if using AF? I have had people tell me the focus is off when I use AF on a tripod on a subject 20 feet away. Is there something that the AF doesn't do right that I am missing, or do some people just need new glasses?

I don't know what else to do to make it sharper if I have a good body, good lens, and use AF.

It could be possible that your lens is a "soft" copy. The D300 has an AF fine-tune function, but to be honest I don't know how to use it and I am not sure whether or not it can do anything if your lens is soft.

Also, aperture will play a part... Many a person has wondered why they are getting soft pictures, and it's because they're shooting wide open or close to it, and the narrow depth of field is producing out of focus areas on the subject. You can try stopping it down and see if that helps your results at all.

If you suspect that your lens can't produce a sharp picture you might consider sending it to Nikon for inspection.

Gaerek · Aug 21, 2009

To elaborate on what fiveoboy01 said, your total DoF for that shot is probably somewhere between 5-10ft. I'm not exactly sure how far from the subject you were, but that would be my guess. That boat (looks to be a large purse seiner) probably has a beam somewhere between 10 and 15ft (I don't know exactly what the beam of this type of boat really is). This means there's a pretty good chance your DoF doesn't cover the entire boat. It'll really depend on your point of focus.

I would try stopping down a bit, and manually selecting a single point of focus (center spot works best, can always focus, recompose, shoot). I would probably try to focus on something that will really show how well in or out of focus something is, like the name of the boat. That's what I used on your photo to tell that it was out of focus. I hope that all helps.