How do I make buildings more crisp?

[robb01]

I really like taking photos of buildings, but my shots seem to lack a bit of something. Here is a church I took for example (bit of blur where I took out power lines, 1st attempt at doing that):

Any tips on sharpening this up a bit, or is it more dependant on lighting? Thanks for the help

 

[Light Artisan]

A solid tripod and mirror lock up mode might help.

What settings are you using?

 

[robb01]

A solid tripod and mirror lock up mode might help.

What settings are you using?

Was using the aperature priority setting, didn't have a tripod handy though. Will def. use one next time

 

[kric2schaam626]

What did you use to take out the power lines?

 

[robb01]

What did you use to take out the power lines?

Photoshop CS2

Used this tutorial

 

[KmH]

Any tips on sharpening this up a bit, or is it more dependant on lighting? Thanks for the help

How much you can sharpen definately depends on the lighting, or more accurately, the exposure.

In the photo you posted not all of the church has the same exposure. Quite a bit of it is under exposed. Under exposure means more image noise.

Sharpening is actually just one side of a coin. The other side of the coin is noise reduction. De-noiseing softens detail.

Think about what sharpening is exactly. Exactly how does sharpening work?

Sharpening works by increasing edge contrast. How many edges there are in an image determines how and by how much you sharpen.
Specifically, you want to control the size of the sharpening halos. So you may not want to use USM (Un-Sharp Mask). You may want to use a High-Pass filter technique, luminosity sharpening, a mid-tone contrast adjustment, an edge mask, or a surface mask.

Sharpening is a multi-step task, having at least 2 steps: capture sharpening, and output sharpening. I usually add a third step in between those 2, known as local sharpening , which is what I would mostly do with the photo you posted because of the variability of the exposure values on the main subject.

What image editing, sharpening, noise-reduction software do you have available?