Searching for Tack Sharp Photos!

Jrlowe14

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My wife and I just took a trip to St Lucia - I came back with hundreds of photos taken but to my suprise, what looked like clear photos through the LCD turn out to be hazy. Not blury but not sharp, just hazy. I have a low end DSLR (Canon T1i) and was using a Sigma 50mm 1.4 as the lens most of the time. We took alot of evening shots in Aperture-priority AE where the ISO was around 1600 shutter speed around 1/20th of a second. I know this camera doesnt do extremly well in dim lit areas - but i thought it would do better than this. Am I expecting to much out of this camera or is it operater error? Could it be the lens? Its a new sigma 50mm so could it need calibrated? Day shots at iso 100 came out looking great however. Any suggestions?
 
It was probably your ISO, 1600 is a bit high for a low end SLR. Though i may be wrong...
 
Your shutter speed of 1/20 sec is where the problem lies. At that speed you'll be suffering from both shake from holding the camera to motion from the subject causing blur.

The typical rule is your shutter speed should be at least 1/focal length of the lens and 1/(focal length of the lens*1.6) for a crop sensor camera like yours.

That pushes you to at least 1/60sec and 1/100sec shutter speeds to counter your own bodies motions from blurring a photo. This value will vary depending on your posture and general physical state - some will have to use faster shutter speeds and others will be able to get away with slower. Tripods, monopods and resting/leaning on firm surfaces will all help improve results.

For the motion of your subjects it varies a lot depending on the nature of the motion; but 1/320sec would be a good target to aim for if you can - going slower and slight motions you'll get away with, but more obvious ones will blur.

Flash can help a lot in many situations, esp in darker lit areas; the flash itself provides a pulse of very fast light and if the flash itself is giving most of the light for a photo (ie the ambient, regular light would give you a black (underexposed) photo); then the splitsecond light pulse acts like a very fast shutter speed in freezing the motions.
 
Something's wrong here.


Exposure Program = aperture priority (3)
ISO Speed Ratings = 1600
Shutter Speed (Exposure Time) = 1/40 second
Aperture = ƒ/1.4


But it looks like she's in the sun. Is there a polarizer on the lens, or some ND filters? Why else would you need to open the lens to f/1.4 while letting the camera raise the ISO to 1600 and set the shutter so slow?
 
But it looks like she's in the sun. Is there a polarizer on the lens, or some ND filters?
I think it must be overhead artificial lighting.

As mentioned, shooting a 1/20 or 1/40 shutter speed is too low (slow). For shooting with a 50mm lens, as a rule of thumb, try to keep the shutter speed over 1/80.
The ISO was getting high at 1600, which can account for the noise/grain, but in terms of the image not looking sharp, part of the problem is also that you're shooting at F1.4 for an aperture. Most lenses are not great at their maximum aperture, but get much better when you stop them down a bit. This lens is much better by F2.0 and even better at F2.8.

So really, all your exposure settings were against you....which is basically saying that you just didn't have enough light. Pump up the ISO (and live with the noise) or use a flash....or just find/use better lighting situations.
 
Want sharp photos?

Buy a Pentax *istD 6mp...add a quality Pentax lens...mount it on a tripod and there you go! (Photo is by Cameron, not mine.)
 

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Want sharp photos?

Buy a Pentax *istD 6mp...add a quality Pentax lens...mount it on a tripod and there you go! (Photo is by Cameron, not mine.)

What's your point, that only pentax can take good photos? :meh:


OP, your choice of settings leaves no room for error. at f1.4 the lens is not at it's sharpest and the depth of field is so shallow that even missing the focus slightly will become all too apparent. A 1/20s, unless you have sniper training you will get camera shake and your subject will most likely move as well. ISO 1600 is not the biggest of your problems, but it will cause a bit of noise and loss of sharpness. In this case though, I would have upped the ISO even further and tried to get a sharper shot at a faster shutter speed and maybe stopping the lens down just slightly.
 
I think your gear is quite capable of producing tack sharp photos. Don't shoot at 1.4 unless you really need to. Most primes are sharpest when stopped down a little.
 
Am I expecting to much out of this camera or is it operater error?
Both.

There is nothing wrong with a t1i. Especially not in this situation. She was obviously holding still for him. I would think that he just missed the focus with the lens wide open. But yeah all the exif data seems odd. To high an iso, to slow a shutter speed and to wide on the aperture. Seems just like user error.
 
A lot of the comments here seem to miss that there's hardly any light in the scene. 1/20, f/1.4, ISO1600, is a dark scene... KMH is right, the T1i is not good at low light, it struggles at 1600 and you'd need to be at 6400 to really do this shot correctly.

"Don't shoot at f/1.4 unless you have to" gets thrown around a lot, but when it's dark, you have to. That Sigma is sharp in the center at 1.4 so it shouldn't be a problem.

The real issue here is that the scene is too dark to be shooting with a T1i. If this was done at 1/80, 1.4, ISO6400, it would be quite sharp. Unfortunately the T1i doesn't even do 6400, never mind pull it off cleanly. Times like this having even a single speedlight to bounce will save the day.
 
Want sharp photos?

Buy a Pentax *istD 6mp...add a quality Pentax lens...mount it on a tripod and there you go! (Photo is by Cameron, not mine.)
naw...he'll still manage to get blurry pictures with a Pentax.
 

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