Help with product photos

[cjweaver13]

I'll apologize in advance for a long post, I just want to make sure I give all possible variable so you can help. I am shooting a pair of gloves with a Sony a6000 and kit lens. I am using a homemade lightbox with 100watt daylight bulbs. My iphone 7 takes better pictures than I am getting with my Sony. What I mean by better, is when I zoom in photoshop to edit, there's alot more detail and clarity from the iphone photos. Here's what my setup is for the Sony. I am actually shooting both in RAW (i have lightroom for iphone and the built in camera shoots RAW). I am trying to find out if the lack of detail is a product of the camera, my skill/technique, or the quality of the lens. Also, the Sony was shot using a tripod and 10sec timer, and I used the manual zoom assist focus using the black checkering and it is sharp in the live view. Thanks for any input!

Sony Picture shot as follows:
f/stop: 7.1
shutter: 1/25
focal: 16mm
iso: 100
aperature: 3.5

Iphone: auto generated settings from lightroom

 

[tirediron]

A couple of things; the iPhone image appears to have been fairly aggressively sharpened; this doesn't look bad in a small sample, but if you were to do a large layout, or even display on a large-screen monitor, it would start to suffer quickly. The main issue I see with the DSLR image is that it's not all in focus; even at that short focal length, f3.5 isn't enough to render the whole image in sharp focus. Start by moving back and shooting at 50-70mm and f8-f10. You will see a marked improvement in your Sony images.

 

[cjweaver13]

I never even though about the iPhone using autosharpening. I took the Sony image and played around with hipass and it looks almost identical after using your recommendations. Thanks for the input

 

[tirediron]

No problem.

 

[photo1x1.com]

Hi and welcome to the forum.
The Sony image is clearly out of focus. Check the top right part of the image, that is in focus.

 

[cjweaver13]

Hi and welcome to the forum.
The Sony image is clearly out of focus. Check the top right part of the image, that is in focus.

Didn't even notice that in that particular image. Overall, the images are better after using the above adjustments, and also a little post editing sharpening. I think the iPhone was just doing the sharpening on its own becuase it's only half the megapixels as well. Thanks for the reply