Clarity and Sharpness

[nhilcissistic]

Hello everyone!

I have a little problem with clarity and sharpness and I hope you can help me with this.

Just to give a little bit of a background, I started taking photos before using Canon t5i. It was a school camera that I was able to borrow several times for my photography class. I really liked the sharpness of the photos that I took so I decided that I will buy one. However, when I checked the price online, I realized that Nikon is somewhat cheaper. So, I ended up buying a Nikon d5500 instead.

I've had the camera for three weeks now and was able to use it for two photo sessions. The problem is, I'm not getting the sharpness that I want and I'm not sure if it's the camera itself or if its in my settings.

Here's a sample photo:

As you can see, the shot is not as clear and sharp as I want it to be. Just by looking at my friend's lips, it's a little bit blurry/noisy. I used a 55-200mm lens, my VR was on, and the lighting was pretty decent (shot this at 6:00PM, Hawaiian time).

Do you think it's a camera setting that I should fix? Or is it my camera itself?

 

[PhotoriousMe]

I can't see the images.

 

[The_Traveler]

no image
error in link

 

[nhilcissistic]

Oh, that's weird. I was using google drive for that so perhaps it's with the privacy setting. Let me try flickr...

 

[Ysarex]

Oh, that's weird. I was using google drive for that so perhaps it's with the privacy setting. Let me try flickr...

Looks like you're fine. Note the bottom left hand corner of your screen shots where the magnification percentage shows. It's best not to try and judge sharpness except at 50 and 100% -- suggest 100%. At percentages like 66.7 you're going to see some loss of clarity due to the screen size interpolation.

You're looking at an NEF file. For the most part digital photos require some degree of sharpening. Here's a reference: http://www.amazon.com/Sharpening-Photoshop-Camera-Lightroom-Edition/dp/0321637550

At this stage when you're processing a raw file it's best to apply sharpening with a light hand. You're doing what's called input sharpening -- switch over to the Detail panel in ACR for the controls.

When your image is ready for output additional sharpening is appropriate but will vary in type and amount depending on your output target.

Joe

 

[nhilcissistic]

Oh, that's weird. I was using google drive for that so perhaps it's with the privacy setting. Let me try flickr...

Looks like you're fine. Note the bottom left hand corner of your screen shots where the magnification percentage shows. It's best not to try and judge sharpness except at 50 and 100% -- suggest 100%. At percentages like 66.7 you're going to see some loss of clarity due to the screen size interpolation.

You're looking at an NEF file. For the most part digital photos require some degree of sharpening. Here's a reference: http://www.amazon.com/Sharpening-Photoshop-Camera-Lightroom-Edition/dp/0321637550

At this stage when you're processing a raw file it's best to apply sharpening with a light hand. You're doing what's called input sharpening -- switch over to the Detail panel in ACR for the controls.

When your image is ready for output additional sharpening is appropriate but will vary in type and amount depending on your output target.

Joe

Thanks Joe. I'm just worried cause I was beginning to think that I chose the wrong camera. I was so contented with Canon, but chose to go with Nikon because its (somewhat) cheaper. And now i'm getting these very soft images. Out of desperation, I actually bought a prime lens—nikon 35mm f/1.8g since my first shoot with the 55-200mm lens went really bad (super soft photos).

So from the shoot yesterday, I used the new 35mm prime lens. Here's a sample photo:

Now this photo is also soft, evident (again) on her lips.


So do you think my camera is fine and that I should just do post-editing on these photos to make them look sharp?


(p.s. just to reiterate, the first photo that i posted was shot using my 55-200mm lens, the second one was using 35mm prime lens).

 

[Ysarex]

Oh, that's weird. I was using google drive for that so perhaps it's with the privacy setting. Let me try flickr...

Looks like you're fine. Note the bottom left hand corner of your screen shots where the magnification percentage shows. It's best not to try and judge sharpness except at 50 and 100% -- suggest 100%. At percentages like 66.7 you're going to see some loss of clarity due to the screen size interpolation.

You're looking at an NEF file. For the most part digital photos require some degree of sharpening. Here's a reference: http://www.amazon.com/Sharpening-Photoshop-Camera-Lightroom-Edition/dp/0321637550

At this stage when you're processing a raw file it's best to apply sharpening with a light hand. You're doing what's called input sharpening -- switch over to the Detail panel in ACR for the controls.

When your image is ready for output additional sharpening is appropriate but will vary in type and amount depending on your output target.

Joe

Thanks Joe. I'm just worried cause I was beginning to think that I chose the wrong camera. I was so contented with Canon, but chose to go with Nikon because its (somewhat) cheaper. And now i'm getting these very soft images. Out of desperation, I actually bought a prime lens—nikon 35mm f/1.8g since my first shoot with the 55-200mm lens went really bad (super soft photos).

So from the shoot yesterday, I used the new 35mm prime lens. Here's a sample photo:

Now this photo is also soft, evident (again) on her lips.


So do you think my camera is fine and that I should just do post-editing on these photos to make them look sharp?


(p.s. just to reiterate, the first photo that i posted was shot using my 55-200mm lens, the second one was using 35mm prime lens).

You're showing us screen shots of your computer so it's really hard to tell -- they look OK for screen shots but that's a potential complication. Either post the JPEG from the camera or better yet set up a free dropbox account and post the NEF.

Joe

 

[nhilcissistic]

Oh, that's weird. I was using google drive for that so perhaps it's with the privacy setting. Let me try flickr...

Looks like you're fine. Note the bottom left hand corner of your screen shots where the magnification percentage shows. It's best not to try and judge sharpness except at 50 and 100% -- suggest 100%. At percentages like 66.7 you're going to see some loss of clarity due to the screen size interpolation.

You're looking at an NEF file. For the most part digital photos require some degree of sharpening. Here's a reference: http://www.amazon.com/Sharpening-Photoshop-Camera-Lightroom-Edition/dp/0321637550

At this stage when you're processing a raw file it's best to apply sharpening with a light hand. You're doing what's called input sharpening -- switch over to the Detail panel in ACR for the controls.

When your image is ready for output additional sharpening is appropriate but will vary in type and amount depending on your output target.

Joe

Thanks Joe. I'm just worried cause I was beginning to think that I chose the wrong camera. I was so contented with Canon, but chose to go with Nikon because its (somewhat) cheaper. And now i'm getting these very soft images. Out of desperation, I actually bought a prime lens—nikon 35mm f/1.8g since my first shoot with the 55-200mm lens went really bad (super soft photos).

So from the shoot yesterday, I used the new 35mm prime lens. Here's a sample photo:

Now this photo is also soft, evident (again) on her lips.


So do you think my camera is fine and that I should just do post-editing on these photos to make them look sharp?


(p.s. just to reiterate, the first photo that i posted was shot using my 55-200mm lens, the second one was using 35mm prime lens).

You're showing us screen shots of your computer so it's really hard to tell -- they look OK for screen shots but that's a potential complication. Either post the JPEG from the camera or better yet set up a free dropbox account and post the NEF.

Joe

Thanks for the suggestion. I shoot in RAW so i dont have the .jpg files unless i save them as such from Adobe CC (which I dont currently have here in my laptop.. i was using my friends laptop yesterday)... so i decided to go with the dropbox file...

Dropbox - DSC_0113.jpg
Dropbox - DSC_0152.jpg

Thanks a lot Joe!

 

[Ysarex]

Oh, that's weird. I was using google drive for that so perhaps it's with the privacy setting. Let me try flickr...

Looks like you're fine. Note the bottom left hand corner of your screen shots where the magnification percentage shows. It's best not to try and judge sharpness except at 50 and 100% -- suggest 100%. At percentages like 66.7 you're going to see some loss of clarity due to the screen size interpolation.

You're looking at an NEF file. For the most part digital photos require some degree of sharpening. Here's a reference: http://www.amazon.com/Sharpening-Photoshop-Camera-Lightroom-Edition/dp/0321637550

At this stage when you're processing a raw file it's best to apply sharpening with a light hand. You're doing what's called input sharpening -- switch over to the Detail panel in ACR for the controls.

When your image is ready for output additional sharpening is appropriate but will vary in type and amount depending on your output target.

Joe

Thanks Joe. I'm just worried cause I was beginning to think that I chose the wrong camera. I was so contented with Canon, but chose to go with Nikon because its (somewhat) cheaper. And now i'm getting these very soft images. Out of desperation, I actually bought a prime lens—nikon 35mm f/1.8g since my first shoot with the 55-200mm lens went really bad (super soft photos).

So from the shoot yesterday, I used the new 35mm prime lens. Here's a sample photo:

Now this photo is also soft, evident (again) on her lips.


So do you think my camera is fine and that I should just do post-editing on these photos to make them look sharp?


(p.s. just to reiterate, the first photo that i posted was shot using my 55-200mm lens, the second one was using 35mm prime lens).

You're showing us screen shots of your computer so it's really hard to tell -- they look OK for screen shots but that's a potential complication. Either post the JPEG from the camera or better yet set up a free dropbox account and post the NEF.

Joe

Thanks for the suggestion. I shoot in RAW so i dont have the .jpg files unless i save them as such from Adobe CC (which I dont currently have here in my laptop.. i was using my friends laptop yesterday)... so i decided to go with the dropbox file...

Dropbox - DSC_0113.jpg
Dropbox - DSC_0152.jpg

Thanks a lot Joe!

Making progress: From looking at the full-res JPEG I think you're fine and the degree of sharpness is appropriate. It's possible her lips are beginning to show some DOF loss. Could still use some more info -- these JPEGs have the EXIF data stripped off. It would help to know for example the lens f/stop used as well as the ISO setting.

I'm calling it a night here -- will check back in the am. In the meantime if you get that info someone else may be able to help tonight.

Joe

 

[nhilcissistic]

Reading you say the words "appropriate" and "okay" calms me down. Whew!

Here's more info:

 

[Derrel]

f/1.8 is wide-open...and you were at 1/2000 second at ISO 640...so you've got a seriously limited depth of field, the lens was shot at its worst aperture, and the ISO is at the level where a slight bit of softening starts to occur...

For the earlier shot...1/200 second in wind strong enough to blow a woman's hair out like that is a marginal shutter speed...especially if shooting hand-held.

Also, at close distances like in both shots, the depth of field band is very shallow! There really is NOT a lot of room for error; often times you will see what we see in the second image: the chin or nose or lips are in fairly good focus, yet not quite "tack sharp", and at some point on the head, you will be able to see a few hairs shown VERY crisply--which is the point where the focus was absolutely dead-on. Often, this point is only three or four inches behind the face.

The closer the distance, the more the lens must be stopped down if the entire face is to be rendered very crisply. At the range the image was shot at, f/1.8 will yield varying degrees of in-focus-ness on a face. If the focus plane is positioned just right, it often doesn't matter to some people if parts of the face are not-quite-razor-sharp. The size the image is viewed at (which sort of also affects the distance the image is viewed at,much of the time) also makes a difference; if you take a shot like the second one and shrink it down to a 320 to 800 pixel-tall image shown on the web, it will look acceptably sharp over the entire face; if you enlarge it to a poster-sized image and print it, you will easily be able to spot ares that are somewhat OOF, other areas that are well focused. A fairly out of focus portrait seen on the iPhone 4 can look pretty good if it is sharpened really heavily, and is seen at a 78k web file.

 

[nhilcissistic]

f/1.8 is wide-open...and you were at 1/2000 second at ISO 640...so you've got a seriously limited depth of field, the lens was shot at its worst aperture, and the ISO is at the level where a slight bit of softening starts to occur...

For the earlier shot...1/200 second in wind strong enough to blow a woman's hair out like that is a marginal shutter speed...especially if shooting hand-held.

Also, at close distances like in both shots, the depth of field band is very shallow! There really is NOT a lot of room for error; often times you will see what we see in the second image: the chin or nose or lips are in fairly good focus, yet not quite "tack sharp", and at some point on the head, you will be able to see a few hairs shown VERY crisply--which is the point where the focus was absolutely dead-on. Often, this point is only three or four inches behind the face.

The closer the distance, the more the lens must be stopped down if the entire face is to be rendered very crisply. At the range the image was shot at, f/1.8 will yield varying degrees of in-focus-ness on a face. If the focus plane is positioned just right, it often doesn't matter to some people if parts of the face are not-quite-razor-sharp. The size the image is viewed at (which sort of also affects the distance the image is viewed at,much of the time) also makes a difference; if you take a shot like the second one and shrink it down to a 320 to 800 pixel-tall image shown on the web, it will look acceptably sharp over the entire face; if you enlarge it to a poster-sized image and print it, you will easily be able to spot ares that are somewhat OOF, other areas that are well focused. A fairly out of focus portrait seen on the iPhone 4 can look pretty good if it is sharpened really heavily, and is seen at a 78k web file.

First, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to you—THANK YOU! Really, thank you! I am so happy to hear that the problem is my settings, and not my camera. And thank you for these suggestions. I am absolutely overwhelmed with the terms you are using (I am very new to this) and so I think I need to work on this very slowly at a time.

You said the image was "shot at its worst aperture". I guess I've been reading articles online wrong. I actually thought that I must shoot in the lowest aperture as possible. (I actually went back to the article and realized that the author was saying that she uses the lowest aperture in low light. My mistake!). I still need to do some serious reading and video watching to understand better how to use the correct aperture. I shot the images in Aperture Priority mode so I had full responsibility of these very incorrect settings.

Also, I have yet to do my research on how to change the focus on my Nikon camera. Before, using the school's Canon t5i, I can change the focus by changing the red dots' places on my viewfinder (sorry, this is the best way i can think of to explain this), but in my Nikon d5500, I cant seem to do that so I only use my camera's auto-focus setting.

The closer the distance, the more the lens must be stopped down if the entire face is to be rendered very crisply. At the range the image was shot at, f/1.8 will yield varying degrees of in-focus-ness on a face.

Sorry for another stupid question, but by "stopped down", do you mean higher aperture number? Perhaps f/4?

 

[Derrel]

Stopped down means the lens aperture is set to one of the smaller-diameter apertures, like f/5.6 or f/6.3 or f/7.1, rather than wide-open at f/1.8. The old term "well stopped-down" usually means something like f/8 to f/22.

The focusing in the D5500 can be user-adjusted. When you get a chance, check the manual.

The great thing about digital cameras is the fast learning curve, and the almost instant feedback.Many beginning shooters, as well as many intermediate shooters who publish YouTube videos, tend toward a fascination with wide-open shooting, such as at f/1.8 with the short primes like the 35 and 50mm lenses, and also wide-open shooting with fast zooms lenses that are f/2.8 models. Many experienced professionals shoot a lot of images at f/5.6, or at even-smaller lens apertures, like f/6.3 or f/7.1 or f/8.

Generally speaking, there is no,one single "best" or "correct" aperture for any situation, but there are a often a couple or three very good, very acceptable exposure settings for the situation at hand., depending on both subject matter, and the creative result that is desired.

 

[Vtec44]

It's probably your lens. I love shooting wide open and shoot f1.6 using f1.4 lenses all the time. Here's a screen cap of my image at 100% zoom. It is pretty darn sharp at f1.6. Obviously it will be even sharper at f2.8-f8, but I don't shoot at that aperture for portraits.

 

[dcbear78]

Only one of the examples is shot wide open so that isn't the only problem here. My guess is in the auto mode for auto focus. Find out asap how to change that to selective point to make sure the focus point is where you want it.