How to get razor sharp focus + portrait editing ideas?

Inklingforsake

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I am a beginner and have been using Nikon D3400 for about 3 months now and I just bought the Nikkor 50mm/1.8G prime lens.

1. I am in the 'lens test' stage. There is no Auto Fine Tune feature on the D3400 and I am still struggling a little bit to get razor sharp images with these lens even with higher shutter speeds. Maybe f/1.8 is too low? How to fine tune?

2. I shot the below picture and I feel like the picture doesn't pop? Is it something that people do in post-processing that makes images pop? For a picture like this, how would I edit?

50mm prime: 1/350, f/1.8, ISO 200, no flash

IMG_8384.JPG


Also, what are your thoughts on the image below? Would sepia tone/ B&W make the picture better?

200mm: 1/320, f/4.5, ISO 200, fill flash

IMG_8385.JPG


Thank you!
 
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At f/1.8, the depth of field is going to so shallow that it will be tough to get much more than an eye in tack sharp focus. Try it at f/2.8 - 4.0.

The first image could have used some fill to help with the eyes. It is soft from using f/1.8. I wouldn't worry about making it pop, just use it as a learning experience.

The second image is much better in my opinion. The biggest thing in it would be to have her bring her eyes back to toward the camera to avoid seeing only the whites of the eye. The background is blown out nicely but the bright street lights and signs will pull attention away from the subject.

These are not bad photos and there is stuff to be learned from them and build on that.

Welcome to the site.
 
MOST 50mm lenses have a slight optical weakness called "veiling glare" at their widest aperture of f/1.4, or f/1.8, or f/2, and this has been true for 60 years or so. At wide-open aperture, MOST lenses are at their very weakest performance, and f/1.8 has very little depth of field, so focusing becomes ultra-critical at f/1.8. The veiling glare issue on some lenses is very bad, and it looks like a very thin diffusion filter has been slapped on top of a mostly-crisp image; this goes away around one f/stop down, so at f/2.5 or f/2.8 or so, most 50mm lenses are markedly more "Crisp" in their rendering.

In the real world, I would seriously avoid ever shooting at f/1.8: use f/2.2, or f/2.5 or f/2.8 instead. For the best shallow DOF, close-range portraiture with a 50mm on APS-C, I like f/3.5 or f/4 if the subject is close.

Shot #1 has a too-yellow look I think; this is a white balance issue, due to incandescent lighting. Shot #2 is a fairly good exposure setting against the bright lights, and is a good fill-flash shot for your camera. The f/4.5 aperture kept the background from being too bright. And it gave a nice highlight on her one cheek, very realistic look to that shot.
 
I achieve razor sharp focus with a combination of careful focusing and additional sharpening added in post production. My honest recommendation though is to not focus on that, and focus on light, color, shape and composition. Getting the right light will give you that "pop". Learning to get sharp photos comes with experience, but to me it's not that important.
 
Thank you so much for the great suggestions. Appreciate it!
 
My honest recommendation though is to not focus on that, and focus on light, color, shape and composition.

I am still learning about composition. It is trickier than in theory, I realize.

Do you think the above pictures could have been composed better?
 
Which 50 mm prime?
Nikon makes six 50 mm prime lenses.

But fast prime lenses often deliver their sharpest focus in a range of lens apertures that starts about 2 stops down (f/3.5 is 2 stops less (down) than f/1.8) from wide open to about f/11.

As a working photographer I only rarely used a 50 mm focal length for a portrait. Most of my portraiture was shot using 105 mm to 300 mm focal lengths.
 
The 50G is a great lens and sharp, just hard to nail focus at 1.8 but it can be done with enough patience. Make sure your shutter speed doesn't drop too low either and look for the right light.
 
The 50G is a great lens and sharp, just hard to nail focus at 1.8 but it can be done with enough patience. Make sure your shutter speed doesn't drop too low either and look for the right light.

Thank you; will do! I figured yesterday that it takes a couple of tries to focus at 1.8 and especially with D3400 which has only 11 focus points.
 
Shooting that wide requires you to be very precise with your focus point and a good understanding of the behavior of the focus system on your camera. I shoot f1.6 90% of the time. Here's a shot that was done at f1.6 (Nikon 50mm f1.4) , and a close up. It's never going to be as sharp as f2 or f5.6, but the appearance of sharpness helps a lot.

20160820_Pine-Rose-Wedding-Liliana-William_01769 - Copy.JPG
 
Shooting that wide requires you to be very precise with your focus point and a good understanding of the behavior of the focus system on your camera. I shoot f1.6 90% of the time. Here's a shot that was done at f1.6 (Nikon 50mm f1.4) , and a close up. It's never going to be as sharp as f2 or f5.6, but the appearance of sharpness helps a lot.

View attachment 135548

That looks great!

Sometimes I feel like I am trying too hard to focus with the 50mm prime at 1.8. It seems so much easier focusing with a 18-55mm lens at f/4.5. Do all cameras behave this way or would a basic camera like D3400 (having a cropped sensor and all) have focusing limitations?
 
That looks great!

Sometimes I feel like I am trying too hard to focus with the 50mm prime at 1.8. It seems so much easier focusing with a 18-55mm lens at f/4.5. Do all cameras behave this way or would a basic camera like D3400 (having a cropped sensor and all) have focusing limitations?

It's a combination of the lens and the camera. My 24-70 f2.8 focuses extremely fast, even in low light, on most modern professional DSLR's. My 85 f1.4 is almost unusable at night and requires a lot more attention even during day time. My 50 f1.4 is somewhere in the middle. IMHO, the limitation is mostly in low light, where it's harder for the camera to obtain focus quickly and accurately. I'd suggest you test it out with different settings. For example, AF-S focus mode is better in some night time situations. Center focus point is faster to obtain focus at night.
 
SoulfulRecover said:
The 50G is a great lens and sharp, just hard to nail focus at 1.8 but it can be done with enough patience. Make sure your shutter speed doesn't drop too low either and look for the right light.

At close distances with the 50mm lens on an APS-C or "DX" camera, here's what DOF Master, the online depth of field computing web page, comes up with. I made this screen capture just a minute ago. In your shot #1, see how her chin and teeth seem to be in the best focus, but the hair and eyes are ever-so-slightly less well-focused? THAT is the tricky thing with a 50mm lens at close distances at f/1.8...the DOF band is .21 foot deep...that's two-tenths of one foot...and the area in front of the actual focus point, and the area behind the focus point--both are exceptionally narrow zones!

50MM DOF AT 5 FEET AT F1-8.JPG


You have 1/10 of one foot in front of the focus point, and about the same behind the actual focus distance. This means that there will be only a very narrow band that appears truly sharp; if the eyes are sharp, that usually helps. In your Shot #1 it appears to me that the teeth and chin were what the AF system locked onto, and that allowed the eyes to be just slightly out of the narrow DOF zone.

One tip is to shoot from 7 feet, and not much closer, for any person-shot. That keeps the nose and chin and forehead from looking unnaturally enlarged. Inside of 7 feet, and there is what's called perspective distortion. it's better to be a biut farther away, and then to crop a high-megapixel image, like the D3400 makes, a solid 24 million pixel image. Being at the 7 to 10 foot distance will create more of the appearance of sharpness that makes things Pop!
 
Sometimes I feel like I am trying too hard to focus with the 50mm prime at 1.8. It seems so much easier focusing with a 18-55mm lens at f/4.5. Do all cameras behave this way or would a basic camera like D3400 (having a cropped sensor and all) have focusing limitations?
Why are you "trying too hard"? Does not the lens focus itself? Of course it does, so what effort do you think you are required to exert?

There are usually some very simple reasons why the lens won't focus. Let's go through them:

1. Do you have some kind of filter on the front of the lens? A cheap UV filter will affect the sharpness, so if you have that, remove it.

2. Have you specified which exact focus area that you want, and is it located on the subject? With stationary subjects (portraiture) use AF-S. Select single point focus, and place that focus point on the eye of your subject.

3. I can't think of a third reason, so if it won't focus, and neither of the above issues are not the problem, then either:

3(a) The lens is defective, and will never be sharp unless it is repaired at a lens repair facility.
(or)
3(b) Your AF module does not meet factory specifications, and will need to be sent to Nikon for repair/adjustment.

Nothing else.

Yer welcome.
 
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