focus issue

[holga girl]

hopefully this is in the right section.

i recently purchased a nikon d200 after having been shooting with a nikon f100 for years. when i use the 200, my camera seems to back focus. it focuses just slightly off of my subject. I have ruled out the cause being the lens as it happens on all lenses and all my lenses work fine on my d70.

i sent the camera back to nikon, and while it is better, it is not perfect. i am used to getting a much larger percentage of focused pics when i shot film and i am just not happy. i attached a few examples.

also, there seems to be an overall softness to my images, which combined with the noise is almost intolerable. any thoughts?

 

[Overread]

Well all digital cameras tend to give softer results than film - this is because they are intended to work with editing software after being shot - so something like the unsharpen mask in photoshop (or elements) or GIMP should really be applied to most shots.
Also whilst the camera does have some built in sharpening programs its often better to shoot in RAW mode (where the weaker camera programs are not applied to the RAW shot) and then convert and edit the shot in computer.

ps that strap-on extra arm looks great - just the sort of thing for a long walk with a camera

 

[holga girl]

thanks. of course, that is not what i wanted to hear... but what are you gonna do? yeah, the extra arm thing was crazy. we did a duel steadycam for a commercial. that guy had that thing strapped to him for over 4 hours just to get about 20 seconds of video. glad i was just there to document.

 

[Overread]

True - but better new is GIMP is a freeware program and is often compared in quality to photoshop - so give it a try (nothing to lose really) though it does have a steep learning curve (can't help past there as I have not used it myself) but for some general info on editing check out this site:
http://www.ronbigelow.com/articles/sharpen1/sharpen1.htm
also look up noise reduction as well
Good luck!

 

[Renair]

Holga Girl, set the D200 in-camera filters to Vivid, this is what most D200 users do to compensate for softness, I know I did it when I had mine and it worked a treat.