Help! Conquering Crisp Focus

[creativelyfive]

I'm fairly new to photography. Been a hobbyist for years but have recently been getting several requests to do portrait sessions, family, senior, kids, newborn, and couples. I love doing it and decided if the demand is there why not make a go of it and make some extra income off of it. But I know that I still have ALOT to learn and have been self taught on everything I've learned so far so bare with me please.

One thing that I am struggling with is getting REALLY crisp photos. Especially if I am not doing a close up shot. I don't know if I'm not doing the right combination of F Stop, ISO and shutter speed or if it is my camera that is just going to have a hard time achieving the results I desire.

I'm using a Canon Rebel Xsi with a Canon 50 mm f/1.8 and occasionally I will use my Tamron 75-300 f/4, but that is very seldom.

Any input or suggestions?

 

[480sparky]

Post a couple samples.

 

[weepete]

Getting really crisp sharp photos is a combination of things, probably the biggest is the sharpness of your lens. Other than that to need to make sure your shutter speed is fast enough to avoid camera shake or motion blur, good focusing, enough depth of field. Lenses also tend not to be the sharpest wide open so shutting the aperture by a couple of stops can help.

As for the settings that's where your camera's meter comes in. So decide what DOF you need and that will give you your aperture, decide how fast your shutter speed needs to be and set the ISO so you can expose the subject properly. That's roughly how I do it for most situations anyway.

 

[creativelyfive]

Post a couple samples.

This is before any editing was done to the images. I know composition on these pictures is not ideal by any means but these were some quick examples that I could pull. I don't think the first one is too terribly bad with its focus but not as crisp as what I have seen other photographers be able to capture....at least it seems that way to me. And the 2nd one is not crisp at all obviously. I know I probably have other issues going on with lighting and such and any critiques with that as well is welcome. Currently I think my shots end up very mediocre as originals and I end up doing a lot of "fixing" in my editing program to make them look good...and that is "good" in terms of a beginner photographer.

 

[Propsguy]

As Sparky suggested, if you post a couple of samples we can probably determine the source of the problem very quickly.

 

[Propsguy]

I see I was a nanosecond late with my previous response...

 

[NedM]

From what I have learned in the field and here on forums is that obtaining a sharp/crisp photo has to do with your shutter speed and DoF.

Other factors include camera shake, quality of your glass, etc.

 

[creativelyfive]

I know that often I struggle with camera shake. I try to implement use of my tripod when I can to try to limit this but when children are the subject matter I have found this method to be not so practical. Or newborn photos where I am moving around a lot and trying to take repeated quick shots to capture just the right one...the tripod just isn't practical. Any suggestions or tricks you have found to help eliminate camera shake without use of a tripod?

Also, what is a good way to figure out where to start with shutter speed? Just trial and error or is there a better way to estimate your starting point?

 

[paigew]

What settings were you using? In #2 you were probably too close for the lens to grab focus. There is a minimum focusing distance on lenses.

 

[robbins.photo]

Well without EXIF data it's hard to be certain but my guess is on #1 your DOF isn't quite sufficient so that everyone in the photo is in sharp focus. For group shots like that it's generally best to stop down the lens based on your distance from the group, which will give you more DOF and that way the folks in the back row will still be in sharp focus even if your focus point is set on the folks in the front row.

 

[weepete]

I know that often I struggle with camera shake. I try to implement use of my tripod when I can to try to limit this but when children are the subject matter I have found this method to be not so practical. Or newborn photos where I am moving around a lot and trying to take repeated quick shots to capture just the right one...the tripod just isn't practical. Any suggestions or tricks you have found to help eliminate camera shake without use of a tripod?

Also, what is a good way to figure out where to start with shutter speed? Just trial and error or is there a better way to estimate your starting point?

Sounds to me like your issue is not camera shake, it's motion blur. Tripods are great but only for still objects or when motion blur is acceptable or even desired. For portraits and people your shutter speed needs to be fast enough to freeze them. Rule of thumb is 1/125th sec will freeze someone walking, 1/200 or 1/250th for faster than that. When I do basketball I find that I need 1/800th as a minimum to freeze the motion. But check it in camera, take a couple of test shots, zoom in and check your focal point to be sure you got acceptable focus.

Rule of thumb for camera shake is 1/(focal length x crop factor) = minimum shutter speed.

Personally I allow a fair bit for this, so I tend to shoot portraits at 1/125th even if the subject is still. If it is a candid I'll go for 1/250th.

The other major mistake is depth of field, like a group portait shot at f1.8 will pretty much gaurentee than one eye will be in focus and everything else not as sharp. Unfortunately I cant see the exif data for the ops shots as I'm on my phone but most of these issues are either too slow a shutter speed or too little dof.

Occasionally people shoot in raw and dont sharpen enough in pp but that's a bit rarer.

 

[weepete]

Oh, and I should probably also mention that focus recompse method can skew your DOF too.

 

[JerryLove]

If I can sum up what I'm reading.
Problem: Motion blur
Solution: Faster shutter
To make solution work: more light or lower F on lens (new lens)

Problem: Camera Shake
Solution: Faster shutter
To make solution work: more light or lower F on lens (new lens)
Solution (2): More stable camera
To make solution work: Tripod.

Problem: Close than minimum focal distance.
Solution: Move back
To make solution work: Move back.
Solution (2): lower minimum focal distance
To make solution(2) work: Get new lens with shorter minimum focus distance (macro lens).

Did I understand it correctly?

 

[Designer]

In the group photo, shot at 1/200s f/4.0 ISO200 50mm, the DOF calculations look like this:

[TABLE="class: resultsTable, width: 100%"]
[TR]
[TD="class: textClassResults, width: 55%"]Subject distance [/TD]
[TD="class: textClassResults"]10 ft[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="colspan: 2"]
[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="class: textClassResults, colspan: 2, align: left"]Depth of field [/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="class: textClassResults"]Near limit [/TD]
[TD="class: textClassResults, align: left"]9.16 ft[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="class: textClassResults"]Far limit [/TD]
[TD="class: textClassResults, align: left"]11 ft[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="class: textClassResults"]Total [/TD]
[TD="class: textClassResults, align: left"]1.84 ft[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="colspan: 2"] [/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="class: textClassResults"]In front of subject [/TD]
[TD="class: textClassResults, align: left"]0.84 ft (45%)[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="class: textClassResults"]Behind subject


[/TD]
[TD="class: textClassResults, align: left"]1 ft (55%)


[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]
So that right there means that if someone's eye was in focus, then somebody else's eye is probably not in focus.

With the baby picture, since you shot at f1.8, I calculate that the DOF is only about 0.2 ft. Which is not much, and depending on where the focus was, it only leaves about three inches for DOF.

 

[robbins.photo]

If I can sum up what I'm reading.
Problem: Motion blur
Solution: Faster shutter
To make solution work: more light or lower F on lens (new lens)

Problem: Camera Shake
Solution: Faster shutter
To make solution work: more light or lower F on lens (new lens)
Solution (2): More stable camera
To make solution work: Tripod.

Problem: Close than minimum focal distance.
Solution: Move back
To make solution work: Move back.
Solution (2): lower minimum focal distance
To make solution(2) work: Get new lens with shorter minimum focus distance (macro lens).

Did I understand it correctly?

Well that's correct, thing is if the first photo was shot at 1/200 shutter speed with a 50 mm lens I think you can pretty safely rule out camera shake and motion blur both. As Designer mentioned this looks to be more of a DOF issue, so if you were to stop down the lens (increase the aperture number) that would give you a greater depth of field and let you get everyone into a nice sharp focus.