Welcome, dude. Ask away...
Hi Michael, thanks.
Geez, such exclusive company! I fear any advice you can give a budding photographer would be overkill on your behalf. Quite impressive credentials indeed.
My issues are quite basic but cannot seem to be answered anywhere I look. It concerns focus. Sounds easy, right? It's not.
I submit to various stock agencies (as many do), but I am becoming increasingly convinced over these past 3 years that it is impossible to get an image tack sharp without a flash and without a tripod. Too many rejections due to "poor focus" is really getting to me.
Yep I know the focal length rule as it applies to shutter speed etc. It makes no difference. Pimping the ISO doesn't work either. My images are always slightly fuzzy, and thus get rejected.
I have even gone "screw it", and used Shutter Priority which nets me a cool 1/1000 shutter speed but no... it doesn't help the image sharpness. My lenses are clean and I can get sharp images with either flash or sturdy tripod w/cable release but when it comes to hand-held images without flash I am lost. Oh, and I only shoot RAW.
I was hoping there is a great revelation out there, an awakening of sorts that will lead me in the right direction.
But really I'm hoping it's just a gear quality issue and that I actually don't suck!
Gear I use is a Nikon D5300 entry level camera.
Lenses: 50mm AF-S Nikkor Prime 1.8
105mm AF-S Micro Nikkor Macro lens
Lastly, the crappy 18-55mm kit lens that came with the camera (quality not great).
I do notice a difference in sharpness between the 2 shorter lenses, the Prime a little sharper and less noise and CA but that's all. Still, it's an issue with both lenses and I cannot get sharp images for the life of me with either lens. And the macro lens? Forget it. Flash or tripod all the way, even with VR otherwise sharpness is out of the question.
Any help would be immensely appreciated, thank you!
Before I throw my camera out the window and accidentally hit a passer-by with it...
I'll provide an example. I took this pic this morning under a freeway. You don't have to zoom in too far to see it's not sharp (had to resize to submit example):
