A query about bluriness in some of my film photos...

jackhardy · Jan 18, 2011

Hey guys,

Basically I've been using an Olympus OM30 for about 3/4 months now and have developed about seven rolls of film, all of which have turned out absolutely fine. I felt that I'd fully got to grips with the camera, but I recently did some photography with a couple of new lenses, one fisheye and the other wide angle, and literally none of the photos on the roll turned out clearly, all appearing blurred and low quality. The ASA settings corresponded to that of the film, I held the camera steady in all the photos, the focus was right, the exposure was right, and yet it still wasn't turning out.

Since this site won't let me post photos on here, I'd really appreciate it if some of you could google 'Ares9139 photobucket' and have a look at the fisheye ones I've uploaded and the one taken from a bridge, it should be right there when you click on my page.

As you can see, none of the shots are especially high quality, which shouldn't the case for my sort of camera, plus both are inexplicably blurry/out of focus. If anyone could help me understand why this is I'd very much appreciate it!

Overread · Jan 18, 2011

You can enbed the photos into the site here using the image code that photobucket gives you. Just copy the code and paste it into the thread here (mind though that ideal your photos should be resized to 800pixels or less on the longest side and if you want to show larger versions use 100% crops for showing select areas at fullsize quality and use links (when you can use them) to link to larger sized versions to view)

misstwinklytoes · Jan 18, 2011

Overread · Jan 18, 2011

^^ what she just did

Though without shutter speed setting info its hard to tell, but at a first glance those almost look like they are just totally out of focus rather than blurred. I'm not ruling out blurring, but they just look so similar in each shot. Did you check that your diopter was correctly set (that thing that lets you calibrate the viewfinder for your eye)

jackhardy · Jan 18, 2011

Ahhh thank you to the person who posted those in the thread, i appreciate it!

Overread said:
^^ what she just did

Though without shutter speed setting info its hard to tell, but at a first glance those almost look like they are just totally out of focus rather than blurred. I'm not ruling out blurring, but they just look so similar in each shot. Did you check that your diopter was correctly set (that thing that lets you calibrate the viewfinder for your eye)

Yeah, it does look out of focus, but they were definitely in focus when I took them, I made sure of that, setting up the shot and spending time making sure it was in focus, I've never had issue with the focus before now. Plus I'd taken a load of similar ones on the roll before and they'd turned out relatively clearly. I mean everything looked fine in the viewfinder and as far as I know, the camera doesn't have a diopter (risk of looking massively noobish if it does!). Those were taken about on 1/125 s as far as I remember, that's the speed I generally use. I just can't quite figure out where I went wrong here!

jackhardy · Jan 19, 2011

Bump?

misstwinklytoes · Jan 19, 2011

I said my cam didn't have a diopter, too. There's a lil wheel right next to the view finder. Check your manual.

Dao · Jan 19, 2011

Which wide angle and fisheye lenses did you have?

Derrel · Jan 19, 2011

The OM30 was an early 1980's SLR that had a sort of primitive "auto-focus" system in it....well before AF was ready for prime-time... read about it here...Olympus Olympus History : OM Two Digit Series

Anyway...it looks like the shots are badly focused. Perhaps the AF detection system is malfunctioning. Maybe the viewfinder screen inside the camera is out of alignment. Maybe the lens mount screws are a bit loose. Maybe the back of the camera has a dent in it. Maybe the film pressure plate is out of whack.

white · Jan 19, 2011

I doubt it's anything but the lens, since OP said he developed 7 rolls without any issues. Just a wild guess, but maybe the focus ring on the lens is messed up, so, for example, when you focus to 5 feet, it's actually 10. Never heard of it happening, but who knows.

PASM · Jan 19, 2011

When you say fish-eye, do you mean a lens attachment? These look like the cheapo chinese w/angle fish-eyes that get put on the front of a lens.

As Derrel mentions, i get the impression the AF can't focus properly through this optic.

JeffieLove · Jan 19, 2011

PASM said:
When you say fish-eye, do you mean a lens attachment? These look like the cheapo chinese w/angle fish-eyes that get put on the front of a lens.

+1 that's exactly what I was thinking since it has the "vignette" around all of the fish eye ones.

PASM · Jan 19, 2011

These look awful anyway..wasting your time/good photo-opps, Jack. I'd throw that glass out and use a 28mm or whatever.

jackhardy · Jan 20, 2011

PASM said:
When you say fish-eye, do you mean a lens attachment? These look like the cheapo chinese w/angle fish-eyes that get put on the front of a lens.

As Derrel mentions, i get the impression the AF can't focus properly through this optic.

white said:
I doubt it's anything but the lens, since OP said he developed 7 rolls without any issues. Just a wild guess, but maybe the focus ring on the lens is messed up, so, for example, when you focus to 5 feet, it's actually 10. Never heard of it happening, but who knows.

misstwinklytoes said:
I said my cam didn't have a diopter, too. There's a lil wheel right next to the view finder. Check your manual.

PASM said:
These look awful anyway..wasting your time/good photo-opps, Jack. I'd throw that glass out and use a 28mm or whatever.

Haha, yep, right on the the money there, that's a fish-eye style lens placed in front of a wide-angle lens.

Also, having now located the diopter, I've realised that's the problem. Basically at the end of the last roll I noticed it was set to -1, must've knocked it at some point. Although I'm not convinced it was like that for the whole roll of film, but nonetheless, that seems to be it.

As for speculation about lens quality, I doubt it's this, as I'd taken a few ones of high quality on the roll previous to it. And this was my first experimentation with distortion and perspective using the fisheye, so I'd hardly say I was wasting my time. All I've posted here is examples of the most blurry ones, I don't thinks it's representative of my best shots.

Thanks everyone for your help, but yeah, foolishness with the diopter seems to have been the cause

JeffieLove · Jan 20, 2011

jackhardy said:
As for speculation about lens quality, I doubt it's this, as I'd taken a few ones of high quality on the roll previous to it. And this was my first experimentation with distortion and perspective using the fisheye, so I'd hardly say I was wasting my time. All I've posted here is examples of the most blurry ones, I don't thinks it's representative of my best shots.

Thanks everyone for your help, but yeah, foolishness with the diopter seems to have been the cause

The reason we were speculating about lens quality is because those "adapters" like the fisheye that you have that goes on the end of the lens are known to be crappy and produce crappy results.

Just wanted to make sure you understood that we were primarily talking about the fisheye lens, not necessarily your real lens