Super Clear Pictures

[Derrel]

"How does one get to Carnegie Hall?"

"Practice,practice,practice."

 

[bigboi3]

insanaq - your focus on the childs face should be on the eyes.. it looks like the focus was on the top part of the lips.

 

[agerone]

the focussing is not good, also on the portrait it seems like you used a big opened aperture, close it to 2.8 at least to be sure that the face is all sharp.
And for the birds you should have tried centered focus.
also if you shoot RAW, in photoshop you can rise the clarity so you picture seems a bit sharper to the viewer.
For the last photo, (I like it aswell ) aperture is low as you already know, but if you just focus on the object you want to be sharp, then it will work. When I want to do that I mainly use the Autofocus, in the preferences I take the "centered focussing" option, then I focus, with the help of the red circle/rectangle in the center of the viewfinder, the part of the object I want to be sharp, press slightly on the shutter to keep the focussing and then I can pan around a bit to see what looks best and that's it.

AND: To be really sure to have a sharp image, just blur the background/foreground, not the object you want to be sharp. Shoot with aperture 8 then and your on the safe side

 

[Taylor510ce]

Yeah, the guy who posted pics, as stated, your focus is off. Work on using your AF points properly.

To the OP, are you zooming in on your pictures and not happy with the sharpness, or are you just speaking at normal view, they aren't sharp? In most cases, people see post processed pics and think that this was because of a super expensive lens. While better lenses are not going to have the inherent problems of cheaper ones (distortion, CA, low contrast etc. ) you probably won't REALLY notice the difference unless magnifying and comparing. I would bet that you are really lacking the processing. Properly adjusting color, contrast, and sharpening will make a huge difference to your pics even with the lenses you are currently using. Unless you simply are not focusing properly. Hard to tell without you posting examples.

 

[djacobox372]

You do realize, that instead of spending the money on a film camera and film, that the OP could put their camera on manual mode and turn AF off on the lenses.

Plus, the ability to have exif data in the images vs. having to write down your settings for each photo in a journal of some sort and keeping track of it with your images is invaluable.

Oh...and then there's the old no matter how a person's images turn out on film, if they go back to an entry level body with a kit lens, they're going to go back to the same image qaulity they started with point of view...

^^
Totally agree! It's far easier to learn the basics with digital, with digital you can experiment and see instant results--with film, unless you take careful notes you'll never remember how you achieved success.

I recommend people learn on digital, get down the basics of aperture, shutter speed, dof, and iso. Once they have that down, try film because it forces you to slow down instead of shooting 100's of photos and "hoping" for one good one.

 

[Vautrin]

Buy a tripod + remote cable release.

When you hold a camera small movements can make details slightly fuzzy.

Otherwise you'll need to take pictures with a fast shuter speed to really prevent movement