Sharpness question w/ examples

[benlonghair]

Have you checked to see if that camera/lens combo is front focusing? Focus Test

Or maybe that lens suffers from lens creep...I know my Canon EF 28-135mm IS USM will zoom out by itself if my camera is pointed downward and I'm not holding the zoom barrel.

Shouldnt be lens creep since I had it racked out. Course, maybe that's the problem.

I'll give the focus test a shot when I get home. Thanks for the tip.

 

[Dwig]

...The thing that annoys the snot out of me is the fact that the manual focus is so touchy. It goes from 1" out of focus to the back to 1" out of focus to the front in just a touch. It's like you breath on it and it's out of focus again.

For closeup work, it is far far better to focus by moving the whole camera in and out and not by turning the "focus" ring. Use the focusing ring to rough focus and move the camera in and out to do the final precise focusing. When approaching true macro ranges, this technique is all but manditory.

 

[NateS]

I'm on manual focus (auto is not as acurate as my eye).

Apparently not since your manual focus attempts aren't nearly as good as the AF attempt(s). You are nowhere near 1:1 mag. ratio on these so I hate to tell you, but you are not going to be nearly as accurate with your eye as what the camera can do with it's AF system.

How big are these eggs. These just don't look THAT close...looks like about 1:4- 1:5 which you should have no problems with. Why not try these with your 18-55 lens....it's very sharp at f/8 and above and it should get you plenty close. I'm not sure the focal length of the lens you are using for these (didn't see where you said it), but if it's a longer lens, then you will get more DOF with the 18-55 as well.

 

[Mark Saint]

i'm noob but i think you should look for the answer in the light, flash etc. and don't put your camera too close.
forget about new lenses, there's nothing impossible in taking eggs photo on any camera. just experiment and practice.