Need help with these pictures

[goodguy]

Being very new in photography I am still trying to see what is good, bad and wrong.
I need to know what to expect from my camera, if I make mistakes or maybe have unrealistic expectation from my camera.
I take closeup pictures and all the time I have a feeling somehow its not in focus.
I tried it with my 18-105mm lens and my 50mm lens.
I tried tripot and hand held shots.
I tried 100ISO and higher.
I tried different shutter speeds and different lighting sets but all look close to what I would expect except that they somehow look to me slightly bloory.

Here are 4 pictures that pretty much represent what I am talking about.
All shots focus is on the eyes and while it looks ok on screen once I start slightly to crop it the eyes look slightly bloory.

Here is the data of the pictures, all where shot with my Nikon D7000 with the 50mm 1.8G lens

Pic 1 F5 1/40 1600ISO
Pic 2 F4.5 1/40 1600ISO
Pic 3 F4.5 1/40 1600ISO
Pic 4 F2 1/80 800ISO

Your info and advice and opinion will be greatly appreciated and if simply my picture taking skills suck please be brutaly honest and let me know what you think I did wrong, thats the only way I will be able to learn.
Let me also know if you think I have an issue with my camera, lens or calibration of the two.

 

[weepete]

Ok, well to get the photos as sharp as possible

1) use a tripod
2) enable mirror lock up
3) use a single point af mode
4) do not focus recompse
5) sharpen in post, especially important when you shoot in raw format
6) make sure there are no other sources of vibration about (turn off your washing machine etc)
7) shoot around 2 stops smaller (ie larger f number) that wide open
8) use the timer on your camera or a shutter release
9) use the prime
10) make sure you have a clean lens

Chances are it's somthing you are doing....

 

[Photographiend]

I love that you are aiming for that precision focus... You are all manual focus right? Does the image appear to be in focus when you snap the shot or are you having trouble getting it in focus in your view finder as well?

As far as trouble shooting I don't know what to tell you. It has been a very long time since I had a cam with manual focus capability and when ever I had issues with focus it was operator error. Although there were times I thought I had the focus until the image was developed and I would find my focus had actually been slightly off.

 

[goodguy]

Ok, well to get the photos as sharp as possible

1) use a tripod
2) enable mirror lock up
3) use a single point af mode
4) do not focus recompse
5) sharpen in post, especially important when you shoot in raw format
6) make sure there are no other sources of vibration about (turn off your washing machine etc)
7) shoot around 2 stops smaller (ie larger f number) that wide open
8) use the timer on your camera or a shutter release
9) use the prime
10) make sure you have a clean lens

Chances are it's somthing you are doing....

I did most of what you said except the mirror up, it looks a bit accesive as I am shotting in resonable shutter speed and not bad lighting condition.

 

[goodguy]

I love that you are aiming for that precision focus... You are all manual focus right? Does the image appear to be in focus when you snap the shot or are you having trouble getting it in focus in your view finder as well?

As far as trouble shooting I don't know what to tell you. It has been a very long time since I had a cam with manual focus capability and when ever I had issues with focus it was operator error. Although there were times I thought I had the focus until the image was developed and I would find my focus had actually been slightly off.

No I use AF, my eye sight is not good enough to use Manual Focus.
Picture seams to be in focus but again my eye sight is not as sharp as it was so I must trust the camera to do the work.

 

[Photographiend]

It is hard to know with a figurine how much detail we are supposed to be seeing. Maybe try another subject? Also faster shutter speeds are good for cutting down on blur from slight camera movements.

 

[weepete]

Were you far enough away? Every lens has a minimum distance you need to be from the subject to get it in focus, on my 50mm f1.8 it's 0.45m

 

[goodguy]

Were you far enough away? Every lens has a minimum distance you need to be from the subject to get it in focus, on my 50mm f1.8 it's 0.45m

Good point I will need to check this.
Thanks for the idea!

 

[SCraig]

Part of them appears to be in relatively sharp focus, a very small part of each one. Your depth of field is very narrow so the entire figurine is not in focus. You are very close to the subject which is one of the values used to calculate depth of field. The closer you are the narrower the DOF. In addition, you were probably shooting with a wide aperture (no EXIF Data on the photos and you didn't list the aperture) which also limits depth of field. Finally, if you were shooting with a wide open aperture no lens is at its sharpest wide open.

 

[goodguy]

I went and took another picture but this time I took it with my 18-105mm zoom lens.
I stepped back about 1.5 meters and zoomed all the way.
Here are the results.

F5.6 1/10 ISO800 Zoom 105

I think the results are much better, what you guys are thinking ?
Maybe indeed the problem was that I was simply too close to my subject.

 

[SCraig]

Minimum focus distance on the 50mm f/1.8 is 0.45 meters (17.75 inches).