Sharpness Priority - What is your secret?

[ORourkeK]

Whenever I am taking pictures of people, I try to make sure they are as sharp as possible. I will go through the settings to try and determine how to set my camera for the best results. Let me take you through my thought process…

1. Shutter speed is one of the most important settings in assuring your subject is sharp. Because of this, I like to start by setting my shutter speed. I like to set my starting point at about 1/80. If my subject is moving I will increase it accordingly. I do not like to go below 1/60.

1. Next is aperture. For a nice shallow DOF I like to keep my aperture as close to 2.8 as I can. The more people added to the photo, the higher I go. This actually helps with the low light problems my D3100 has.

1. My last step is ISO. Being that my D3100 isn’t the best in low light settings, I try to keep my ISO as close to 100 as possible. Anything past 400 and it starts to get iffy. So my priority is to keep my ISO as close to 100 as possible.

So, this is my thought process while taking photos of people. This can start to become tricky pretty quickly. If I take a picture with these settings and it is underexposed, I will adjust my ISO first. If I get to 800 and it is still underexposed, I will move onto shutter speed. Being that I am trying to get the sharpest photo possible, slowing down my shutter speed kills me. Anything slower than 1/60 will result in a picture with a blurry subject. So I guess this has really become a topic of proper exposure, while focusing on keeping your subject sharp.

Next is focus. You can’t have a sharp subject if your focus is poor. I have been using my focus points to choose what I want to focus. I am going to start using the two step shutter for focusing and see if that helps. I read that it is more effective than selecting a different focus point. Anyone have experience with this?

After going through these steps, I still cannot get my subjects as sharp as I would like sometimes. This probable had a lot to do with the lens I was using, and hopefully my new Tamron 24-70 will help. I see some pictures where the subjects almost seem like they are jumping out of the picture they are so sharp. I have yet to be able to achieve this. Am I expecting too much from my 3100? Or am I just not skilled enough yet? Maybe my thought process is completely wrong and someone can point out my mistake.

I will leave you all with the question, how do you all make sure your subject is nice and sharp? *What is your secret?*

 

[D7K]

"two step shutter for focusing" - are you back button focusing at the moment?

May be you could post a few images you're struggling with to give us an idea of the pains you're seeing?

I am no great photographer myself, but i tend to use single point AF mostly, same as you with close to 100 as poss and accept that just because I have a fast 1.8 lens, does not mean I shoot that in all situations...

 

[robbins.photo]

Whenever I am taking pictures of people, I try to make sure they are as sharp as possible. I will go through the settings to try and determine how to set my camera for the best results. Let me take you through my thought process…

1. Shutter speed is one of the most important settings in assuring your subject is sharp. Because of this, I like to start by setting my shutter speed. I like to set my starting point at about 1/80. If my subject is moving I will increase it accordingly. I do not like to go below 1/60.

1. Next is aperture. For a nice shallow DOF I like to keep my aperture as close to 2.8 as I can. The more people added to the photo, the higher I go. This actually helps with the low light problems my D3100 has.

1. My last step is ISO. Being that my D3100 isn’t the best in low light settings, I try to keep my ISO as close to 100 as possible. Anything past 400 and it starts to get iffy. So my priority is to keep my ISO as close to 100 as possible.

So, this is my thought process while taking photos of people. This can start to become tricky pretty quickly. If I take a picture with these settings and it is underexposed, I will adjust my ISO first. If I get to 800 and it is still underexposed, I will move onto shutter speed. Being that I am trying to get the sharpest photo possible, slowing down my shutter speed kills me. Anything slower than 1/60 will result in a picture with a blurry subject. So I guess this has really become a topic of proper exposure, while focusing on keeping your subject sharp.

Next is focus. You can’t have a sharp subject if your focus is poor. I have been using my focus points to choose what I want to focus. I am going to start using the two step shutter for focusing and see if that helps. I read that it is more effective than selecting a different focus point. Anyone have experience with this?

After going through these steps, I still cannot get my subjects as sharp as I would like sometimes. This probable had a lot to do with the lens I was using, and hopefully my new Tamron 24-70 will help. I see some pictures where the subjects almost seem like they are jumping out of the picture they are so sharp. I have yet to be able to achieve this. Am I expecting too much from my 3100? Or am I just not skilled enough yet? Maybe my thought process is completely wrong and someone can point out my mistake.

I will leave you all with the question, how do you all make sure your subject is nice and sharp? *What is your secret?*

A few options here:

Stop down the lens - it will give you more depth of field and thus a sharper photo - if you don't have enough light to keep your ISO low enough to be at your comfort level, use a flash or add some other form of lighting. If your still wanting background seperation, move your subject further away from the background.

Tripod or monopod - for those times when you need to drop your shutter speed, you can still get nice sharp photos - particuarly if you add a remote trigger along with the tripod.

 

[Derrel]

Now that we're in The Digital Era, I try and buy a reallllly good camera for the era. ISO 100 is a recipe for low-noise, blurry images under many fluid shooting situations. Unless f/2.8 happens to be stropped down to f/2.8 on a TOP-shelf lens, f/2.8 is a recipe for a very faintly-soft, all-over thing called veiling glare, which is a fancy way of saying the picture quality is ever-so-slightly low in contrast and the," Ultra-fine details are just.not.rendered.very.well." As far as speeds go... 1/80 second is very risky on people who are moving, and on longer-lens work, it's a recipe for disaster. Today's better cameras offer a HUGE range of workable ISO values. I shot the Canon 5D for six years while it was considered good,and the 5D classic has excellent ISO response from 100 to 1250, a very nice almost flat performance line on DR and color. I went to the old Nikon D3x in early 2012, bought used, when it was in the top-10 in sensor performance. It has more DYnamic Range than I know what to do with, now that we have Lightroom and "digital fill-light" processing and so on. Having a good camera for the era helps, a lot.

There is a balancing point, and a tipping point in ALL camera setting scenarios. I'll come right out and state it plainly: hewing to ISO 100 for ANY outdoor people work is a mistake, 9 times out of 10. Period. The time it is not a mistake is when you need to use flash-fill or synchro-sun flash or flash-as-mainlight outdoors.

Get the ISO UP, so that you can hold a shutter speed that will FREEZE movement, and STOP camera shake. And stop shooting at f/2.8, unless you've got a realllllllly good prime lens like an 85 or 105 or 135, stopped down two full f/stops from wide-open. The difference between f/2.8 and even f/3.5 can be a remarkable difference. Using f/5.6 can cure all sorts of "focusing problems".

Just today on TPF we had a young professional shooter complain about missed focus on a shoot; the basic theory is to shoot at an f/stop that has at least "a little bit" of a focusing/shutter speed "safety margin".

Your ISO 100, f/2.8, 1/80 to 1/60 second scenario is reallllly doing you no favors whatsoever. You're actually limiting yourself terribly. Get that ISO level UP! Stop down to f/3.5 at least. Get the shutter speed to a FAST speed. You're just totally, totally working on the margins and are not leveraging anything. I started digital shooting with a Nikon D1, a 2.7 megapixel d-slr with absolute S**+ ISO performance...the D3100 is like eight generations better and newer. You definitely need to reconsider the exposure triangle parameters you are using as your start point, at least for fluid shooting situations. Think more along the lines of f/4.5 at 1/500 second at ISO 320.

 

[D7K]

^^ These guys explained much better than I did.... I like to keep an ISO low in general but i know my camera's limits.. the rest is as they say.. Good advice and well said..

 

[Derrel]

You wanna pass some idiot going EXACTLY 64.5 MPH in the middle lane on the freeway??? You'll never do it tached out in 1st gear...drop her into third gear and TACH it out till you revv up to near the red-line, then catch 4th and make your pass.....Zooooooooom!!!!!!!!!

 

[ORourkeK]

Now that we're in The Digital Era, I try and buy a reallllly good camera for the era. ISO 100 is a recipe for low-noise, blurry images under many fluid shooting situations. Unless f/2.8 happens to be stropped down to f/2.8 on a TOP-shelf lens, f/2.8 is a recipe for a very faintly-soft, all-over thing called veiling glare, which is a fancy way of saying the picture quality is ever-so-slightly low in contrast and the," Ultra-fine details are just.not.rendered.very.well." As far as speeds go... 1/80 second is very risky on people who are moving, and on longer-lens work, it's a recipe for disaster. Today's better cameras offer a HUGE range of workable ISO values. I shot the Canon 5D for six years while it was considered good,and the 5D classic has excellent ISO response from 100 to 1250, a very nice almost flat performance line on DR and color. I went to the old Nikon D3x in early 2012, bought used, when it was in the top-10 in sensor performance. It has more DYnamic Range than I know what to do with, now that we have Lightroom and "digital fill-light" processing and so on. Having a good camera for the era helps, a lot.

There is a balancing point, and a tipping point in ALL camera setting scenarios. I'll come right out and state it plainly: hewing to ISO 100 for ANY outdoor people work is a mistake, 9 times out of 10. Period. The time it is not a mistake is when you need to use flash-fill or synchro-sun flash or flash-as-mainlight outdoors.

Get the ISO UP, so that you can hold a shutter speed that will FREEZE movement, and STOP camera shake. And stop shooting at f/2.8, unless you've got a realllllllly good prime lens like an 85 or 105 or 135, stopped down two full f/stops from wide-open. The difference between f/2.8 and even f/3.5 can be a remarkable difference. Using f/5.6 can cure all sorts of "focusing problems".

Just today on TPF we had a young professional shooter complain about missed focus on a shoot; the basic theory is to shoot at an f/stop that has at least "a little bit" of a focusing/shutter speed "safety margin".

Your ISO 100, f/2.8, 1/80 to 1/60 second scenario is reallllly doing you no favors whatsoever. You're actually limiting yourself terribly. Get that ISO level UP! Stop down to f/3.5 at least. Get the shutter speed to a FAST speed. You're just totally, totally working on the margins and are not leveraging anything. I started digital shooting with a Nikon D1, a 2.7 megapixel d-slr with absolute S**+ ISO performance...the D3100 is like eight generations better and newer. You definitely need to reconsider the exposure triangle parameters you are using as your start point, at least for fluid shooting situations. Think more along the lines of f/4.5 at 1/500 second at ISO 320.

Thanks for your reply. I try to keep my shutter speed as fast as possible, while keeping a good exposure. I don't like to go past 800 ISO because of all the noise, but maybe you are right and that is one of the only options I have besides bringing in external light.

 

[D7K]

Work with the light, if you are shooting mainly low light then maybe look to upgrade to a body that will handle a higher ISO with less degradation .. And as always...just enjoy shooting, why else do we do it!

 

[D7K]

You wanna pass some idiot going EXACTLY 64.5 MPH in the middle lane on the freeway??? You'll never do it tached out in 1st gear...drop her into third gear and TACH it out till you revv up to near the red-line, then catch 4th and make your pass.....Zooooooooom!!!!!!!!!

Even as a non-driver I appreciated this analogy...

 

[ORourkeK]

A few options here:

Stop down the lens - it will give you more depth of field and thus a sharper photo - if you don't have enough light to keep your ISO low enough to be at your comfort level, use a flash or add some other form of lighting. If your still wanting background seperation, move your subject further away from the background.

Tripod or monopod - for those times when you need to drop your shutter speed, you can still get nice sharp photos - particuarly if you add a remote trigger along with the tripod.

Thanks Robbin. I will make sure I use a higher aperture from now on. I was actually thinking about picking up a monopod. I will start to do some research on them.

 

[ORourkeK]

Work with the light, if you are shooting mainly low light then maybe look to upgrade to a body that will handle a higher ISO with less degradation .. And as always...just enjoy shooting, why else do we do it!

My next upgrade will definitely be a new body.

 

[The_Traveler]

What Derrel said is totally right on track.
I suggest you go to dofmaster.com and look at the size of the DOF for your lenses and camera at the different f stops that you use.
Then practice a lot because taking good pictures cannot be done by the numbers alone.

If I am in a tough situation where the exposure triangle is getting pushed out of shape, I would rather have a noisy image that can be managed to some degree than have one with so much motion blur that it is unusable.

That being said, sharpness is not the ultimate criterion for the worth of a picture.

 

[The_Traveler]

My next upgrade will definitely be a new body.

Or a 50 mm 1.8 which will give you more light, good portrait length on a crop body and a inexpensive upgrade to your lenses.

 

[ORourkeK]

My next upgrade will definitely be a new body.

Or a 50 mm 1.8 which will give you more light, good portrait length on a crop body and a inexpensive upgrade to your lenses.

I will keep that in mind. Thanks Lew.

 

[Braineack]

Shutter speed is one of the most important settings in assuring your subject is sharp. Because of this, I like to start by setting my shutter speed. I like to set my starting point at about 1/80. If my subject is moving I will increase it accordingly. I do not like to go below 1/60.

I try to maintain no lower than 1/125sec. I'll turn off VC/VR if I start to get about 1/500.

Next is aperture. For a nice shallow DOF I like to keep my aperture as close to 2.8 as I can. The more people added to the photo, the higher I go. This actually helps with the low light problems my D3100 has.

You want to stop the lens down to maintain the best sharpness throughout, however that lens is pretty sharp wide-open. But you'll have a narrow DOF. I suggest starting at f/5.6 unless you need the extra light.

My last step is ISO. Being that my D3100 isn’t the best in low light settings, I try to keep my ISO as close to 100 as possible. Anything past 400 and it starts to get iffy. So my priority is to keep my ISO as close to 100 as possible.

800 ISO is fine on the D3100. I often took it to 1600--Above that is gets iffy for sure, but still complete usable. This was shot at ISO 2800 with a D3100 using the cheap 55-200mm and it's fine: https://www.flickr.com/photos/80607199@N08/9527687182/sizes/l

Dont worry so much about ISO if it means you need a very slow shutter that will capture your motion or your subject's. While ISO 100 is great for quality, modern cameras handle high ISO values pretty well if you have to sacrifice.

So, this is my thought process while taking photos of people. This can start to become tricky pretty quickly. If I take a picture with these settings and it is underexposed, I will adjust my ISO first. If I get to 800 and it is still underexposed, I will move onto shutter speed. Being that I am trying to get the sharpest photo possible, slowing down my shutter speed kills me. Anything slower than 1/60 will result in a picture with a blurry subject. So I guess this has really become a topic of proper exposure, while focusing on keeping your subject sharp.

Not a horrible process. But I try, even at short focal lengths, to stay about 1/125sec. Working on your method here helps as well. I have very sharp images with the Tamron at 1/30sec.

Next is focus. You can’t have a sharp subject if your focus is poor. I have been using my focus points to choose what I want to focus. I am going to start using the two step shutter for focusing and see if that helps. I read that it is more effective than selecting a different focus point. Anyone have experience with this?

not quite sure I understand this.

After going through these steps, I still cannot get my subjects as sharp as I would like sometimes. This probable had a lot to do with the lens I was using, and hopefully my new Tamron 24-70 will help. I see some pictures where the subjects almost seem like they are jumping out of the picture they are so sharp. I have yet to be able to achieve this. Am I expecting too much from my 3100? Or am I just not skilled enough yet? Maybe my thought process is completely wrong and someone can point out my mistake.

D3100 and a sharp lens (85mm @ f/2.8): https://www.flickr.com/photos/80607199@N08/9647214582/

It's not the camera; it's the user. I also post all my images and apply sharpening. *This is a must*

My D600 is sharper for sure, but it's not noticeable unless you're looking at full size pictures, then it become apparent. But I've seen MUCH worse...