Sharpness Priority - What is your secret?

[coffeefilter]

The op mentioned ISO and noise but one thing I don't think has been talked about is if he's shooting jpg instead of raw. If that's the case then you will start to see noise earlier (lower ISO) than with raw.

I shoot RAW.

FYI, Nikon D3100 Specs says you can push your ISO to 919 with low levels of noise, and useable at 3200.

 

[ORourkeK]

I shoot RAW.

That rules that out then.

Haha. It was a good thought though.

 

[DanielPhotog]

Some solid advice here. For sharpness, know your lenses' peak resolution and peak contrast apertures. SLR lens review has some nice charts that give lines/mm at different apertures for many lenses, and you can see how the resolution scores create a bell curve from wide open iris to pinhole size. Rule of thumb for me, whatever your wide open aperture is, add 3 to it and you'll maximize sharpness. a 1.4 does well at f4-f5.6, 2.8 does well at 5.6-6.3, a 5.6 does well at f8-f16. My 35mm flektogon 2.4 apparently gets some solid border sharpness at f11, but center is pretty maxed out between 5.6-f8 already.

If I'm shooting with my 20mm 2.8 nikkor for example, I would want to shoot at 5.6 to get maximum diffraction free sharpness. Shutter speed no lower than 1/125, ISO just enough to allow that shutter speed to happen. (sometimes I go auto iso in Manual mode and adjust aperture and shutter so that the iso will help compensate to make that happen, otherwise i live in Av mode and keep an eye on shutter speed, dropping f stop number if the shutter is falling too slow, and trying to stick as close as possible to the peak resolution aperture).

Pretty much, stop down a few stops from wide open (if it's a 2.8, then 5.6-8 are money zones, if it's a 5.6 kit lens or tele zoom, stop it down to f8-14 range) and fix everything else up to make the shot work. Stopping down further than 5.6 on my nikkor 20mm, for example, starts to introduce diffraction which dulls the image despite making the DOF larger (so you get a big DOF, but the quality of sharpness within that DOF begins to degrade. So stopping down too aggressively can also ruin your shot. My canon 50 1.4 for example maxes out at 5.6 at the corners and center, then starts to drop off. I'm not fond of f22 shots with that particular lens, whereas a 70-300 f5.6 zoom would get some nice results between f16-f22

For stationary targets, VR or IS is nice, but nothing beats a tripod for architecture shots, etc. VR and IS is a waste for shooting people and even plants that sway in the wind IME, because the portraits will lose tons of detail and start to blur below 1/125 with or without VR/IS. If your target moves, the only solution is to use faster shutter speeds, unless they invent 'subject stabilization'.....

 

[ORourkeK]

The op mentioned ISO and noise but one thing I don't think has been talked about is if he's shooting jpg instead of raw. If that's the case then you will start to see noise earlier (lower ISO) than with raw.

I shoot RAW.

FYI, Nikon D3100 Specs says you can push your ISO to 919 with low levels of noise, and useable at 3200.

Thanks. I have been using higher ISO and to my surprise the quality isn't bad. I also picked up Topaz DeNoise. That program is amazing.

 

[DanielPhotog]

Pump up that ISO! Shoot RAW! And turn up the luminance noise redux.

For fun, get your tamron 24-70 2.8 on a tripod and set it to Av mode at f5.6 or 6.3. Literally shoot anything at ISO 100 on the tripod with 2 second timer on the drive settings and everything will be tack sharp (for stationary targets). Your 50-200mm probably maxes out at f11. Shooting handheld, do the same, just pump the ISO up to let these peak apertures happen.

 

[Derrel]

The op mentioned ISO and noise but one thing I don't think has been talked about is if he's shooting jpg instead of raw. If that's the case then you will start to see noise earlier (lower ISO) than with raw.

I shoot RAW.

FYI, Nikon D3100 Specs says you can push your ISO to 919 with low levels of noise, and useable at 3200.

Something that many people forget: there is High ISO in bad, sucky lighting conditions. And there is High ISO in decent light. Outdoors, in full-spectrum, real light from the sun, High ISO during daylight hours can look pretty damned good! INDOORS, in weird spectrum light, which happens to be dim light too, High ISO can look bad.

Noise looks worst in underexposed areas; outdoors during the day, there's usually a MUCH less noticeable quality drop off at the high ISO values compared to say, shooting outdoors at night by the light of a campfire...where there's ZERO fill light. A good number of users first try High ISO when their backs are against the wall, at say, the school play with spotlighting + deep shadows, and the results are bad; but it is NOT the same thing to resort to High ISO in "decent" lighting conditions!

 

[pgriz]

OK, Derrel, you're making 'way too much sense. Knock it off. :mrgreen:

 

[Derrel]

OK, Derrel, you're making 'way too much sense. Knock it off. :mrgreen:

Oh, come on now. Actually, as I've been reading through this thread, I agreed with a lot that sashbar and braineack wrote, as well as some other posters. I think it was bratkinson who mentioned specifically having adequate depth of field...that does tend to be a BIG factor in perceived sharpness. Just this AM, I found myself clicking through a huuuge Facebook collection site of photos like "Let The Kids Dress Themselves", and "Kids and Their Pets", and some stuff. I blame this 200-pictrure exploratory trip on one of our very own, the talented PaigeW from Texas, who started off my trip because her FB page linked to a shot of her darling daughter and their big slobbery family dog....it allll started with a single arrow-click to bring up the next pic, and before I knew it...BOOM! I was into all these photos taken by family photographers, many of whom showed work done in very soft, dreamy, shallow depth of field styles. Not all of it. The Kids and Water section had a mix of sharp, and impressionistic/blurry/ethereal stuff. Some of the maternity pics were sharp, others were shallow focus and gauzy/dreamy. There was GREAT "sharp stuff" and also some great "blurry stuff".

Wow...sounds like I am advocating non-sharp pics in a sharp pics thread! OMG...time for more coffee. STOP USING f/1.8!!!! Start shooting at f/5.6!!!

 

[ORourkeK]

Wow...sounds like I am advocating non-sharp pics in a sharp pics thread! OMG...time for more coffee. STOP USING f/1.8!!!! Start shooting at f/5.6!!!

That is exactly what I did. I would say I have improved quite a bit from the suggestions in this thread. Thanks everyone! I have a thread up of pictures I took in the park. I used the suggestions from this post if anyone is interested and hasn't seen it already.

http://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/people-photography/362987-trip-park-c-c-welcomed.html

 

[Braineack]

...I agreed with a lot that sashbar and braineack wrote...

:goes back and rereads, obviously, stellar advice:

 

[robbins.photo]

OK, Derrel, you're making 'way too much sense. Knock it off. :mrgreen:

Oh, come on now. Actually, as I've been reading through this thread, I agreed with a lot that sashbar and braineack wrote, as well as some other posters. I think it was bratkinson who mentioned specifically having adequate depth of field...that does tend to be a BIG factor in perceived sharpness. Just this AM, I found myself clicking through a huuuge Facebook collection site of photos like "Let The Kids Dress Themselves", and "Kids and Their Pets", and some stuff. I blame this 200-pictrure exploratory trip on one of our very own, the talented PaigeW from Texas, who started off my trip because her FB page linked to a shot of her darling daughter and their big slobbery family dog....it allll started with a single arrow-click to bring up the next pic, and before I knew it...BOOM! I was into all these photos taken by family photographers, many of whom showed work done in very soft, dreamy, shallow depth of field styles. Not all of it. The Kids and Water section had a mix of sharp, and impressionistic/blurry/ethereal stuff. Some of the maternity pics were sharp, others were shallow focus and gauzy/dreamy. There was GREAT "sharp stuff" and also some great "blurry stuff".

Wow...sounds like I am advocating non-sharp pics in a sharp pics thread! OMG...time for more coffee. STOP USING f/1.8!!!! Start shooting at f/5.6!!!

OMG Derrel - you fell down the adorable kid/slobbery dog rabbit hole? Are you ok my friend? Do you need an intervention?

Lol

 

[pgriz]

Derrel, my take-away from your comments is to consider using a higher ISO under good light conditions to get higher shutter speeds while keepng the aperture quite small. Truthfully, I never considered it, and am always setting my ISO at the native (100) level when in good light. You're opening my eyes to that being, in some ways, a false economy. So, I need to take a few test shots at higher ISO settings (and good light conditions) and see if my creaking-old T1i will produce decent results. If my sensor works in the way you imply it should, then you've just enalrged my "performance space" in terms of setting the exposure. And that, my friend, is a "good thing".