Why I can't shoot good sharp high quality photos?

[Meisam]

Thanks Grahame
She moved a lot, my camera was set on f/8 and the shutter speed was so slow!

I think I should throw this idea out of my head to stay on small aperture and I should move toward to the largest aperture my lens allow me to. So I might have more blurry space in my photos and maybe some bookeh (who knows? Does 18-55 really have bookeh effectl?!) and as John said and I agree with him more attention will go to the subject then.

And I notice best sharpness on my lens are in center of image and where focus is. Unfortunately what made me use deep depth of field was when I took portrait I noticed one eye in focus while the other one wasn't also lips, nose and etc. because I had used small depth of filed and I focused on one eye. So I used smaller aperture but I lost sharpness and more background become clear ( I know as much as background farther from the subject it becomes more blurry).

I think next time I should work on:
1. Golden time (Light and Shadows) to avoid flat photos
2. Composition, and forgot where I am and think about what is the subject
3. Using largest aperture (3.5 or 5.6 on my EF-S 18-55mm IS II lens)
4. The most important thing as I understand from you guys posts... FOCUS!
5. Better Sky (of course not an empty flat sky)

any more tips?

PS. I now have a question is this lens suitable for landscape photography... most of you said sun was small, poles were small but they were good subjects... I think in those situation I needed a telephoto lens! What do you think?

I think it doesn't work as well...

[Stagecoach]

Hi Meisam,

Your thought process is very busy and you are certainly persevering with you quest to improve. I'll again give my views and hopefully give you more 'ideas' to consider.

I'm not familiar with your 18-55 and you ask if it does actaully produce a bokeh, I'm not sure what it produces so give it a trial. Get in close and take a load of shots of the same subject at various apertures, compare them and learn what you can achieve with that lens.

As for DOF it appears you fully understand the concepts and there are times when using either a small or large aperture are advantageous. You need to consider this before each shot.

As for your points 1 to 5 agree but;

3. As above comment re DOF.

5. Not necessarily. The pic of the sunset and beach above is a good example of where a bland sky has worked well in my opinion. If it had been full of fluffy contrasty clouds it would have competed with the interesting detail of the sea and beach. I think the image would have been too busy then. Another example of this was the boat on the beach where the boat should have been the main subject (if taken at a better angle) and a plain background would have complimented it.

I do not do much landscape photography so feel totally unqualified to answer if the 18-55 is suitable for landscapes. I'm sure many will advise there are better and you may also be better off with a telephoto BUT you produced the above with it which I think is pretty good !

As for any tips heres three to start with;

1. Always use a tripod if you can to assist with sharpness unless you are simply taking snaps.
2. Having had the oppurtunity to take the above sunset/beach shot you should have taken a number at different apertures.
3. Get in close at times.

Grahame

[jeeperman]

Meisam,
Out of the two, the 18-55 would be what most will use for landscape. Although don't let that put you off the tele. There are times when the tele will be the best choice depending on what you want from the scene and image. Such as compressing distances between subjects.

Your 18-55 will produce a Bokeh.....which is basically an out of focus background. However it will be less noticeable/extreme in most cases. If you were to get within a foot of your subject with your background a ways off and open up you aperature you will see it fairly well.

As said above, just go try things out. Use the same subject, use different aperatures and then move closer and further away from your subject and start going through the aperatures again. You will learn fairly quickly what you need in a given sittuation.
Enjoy
Paul

[nimitzbenedicto]

Thanks Grahame

any more tips?

PS. I now have a question is this lens suitable for landscape photography... most of you said sun was small, poles were small but they were good subjects... I think in those situation I needed a telephoto lens! What do you think?

Hi Meisam,

I like your latest beach/sun golden hour pix above.

Perhaps the more experienced posters here have already covered your technical questions, so just some info from a newbie here. 18 - 55mm lens are well-suited and wide enough for landscapes.
Telephoto lens for landscapes? Maybe in specific shots.

"sun/poles small....". Well, hmmmm......... for me photography is supposed to be enjoyed. If it causes you stress, then you are not enjoying it. Just shoot and have fun....

[rpcrowe]

I do not have a decent photograph of Mount Ranier near Tacoma, Washington, despite trying for a week while on vacation in Tacoma. I would drive to the place I wanted to shoot a couple of times a day but, it was never clear enough for a shot.

What I want to point out from that experience is that a some of the "apparent sharpness" in a landscape image results from lighting and air quality.

[ajohnw]

Hi Meisam,

In my opinion no the result has not worked but the composition is much better than your original take.

Firstly you have attempted to 'make' a picture from an original image in which the dog was not particulary in focus or sharp and partly overexposed in areas losing detail most pronounced on its head. In cropping from the original you have exagerated this.

If you look at the histogram of this image you will see that it is very heavily loaded to the left.

The easiest solution would have been to take this shot originally.

The composition is much better now. The dog is the subject and the pose is more interesting than some. The problem then is that the dog needs to be perfect. A couple of things about the various shots of the dog confuse me. I originally thought over exposure and miss focus but looking a little more closely I wonder if you are working from raw and also what software you are using?

Some of the beach and the dogs nose are in focus so I suspect the problem may be the way you are processing the shot.

As to tone mapping and the other adjustments that are usually needed with it this video shows it all quickly and clearly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6hBST7V7kA

How various packages handle this aspect varies.

John

[Meisam]

As to tone mapping and the other adjustments that are usually needed with it this video shows it all quickly and clearly.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6hBST7V7kA
How various packages handle this aspect varies.
John

Thanks John but...
" Fotoxx is a free open source Linux program for photo editing and collection management. "

I have windows 7, I shoot in RAW and I use Adobe Camera Raw 7.1 and Photoshop CS6 to edit my photos.
I barely use sharpening or noise reduction, I don't know but I think I am not good at using those filters.

I use clarity too much, I think it makes photo looks sharp but it changes the structure of photo...
I change highlight, shadow at first point, then add or decrease some white and black to reach better histogram...
then some contrast... if it needed...

I hate flat photo something I do experiencing a lot.
When is the golden time?
If I shoot in shade in golden time I won't receive good result? right?

I should have take photo toward the light or back the light or in an angle? 45 degree for example!

[Manfred M]

When is the golden time?
If I shoot in shade in golden time I won't receive good result? right?

"Golden hour" is just after sunrise and just before sunset, and the further you get away from the North and South Pole towards the equator, the shorter it gets, especially in the summer. I know where I live; this can be as little as 20 minutes around the time of the summer solstice; but it can can last a couple of hours at the beginning of winter. I was in Iceland in late June and early July a few years ago, and the lighting was wonderful from 21:00 right through until 03;00 as it never got that dark and the lighting was beautiful at midnight; the farmers were still out baling hay at midnight.

What you get at "Magic Hour" are beautifully diffuse light and long, soft shadows.

You will have to experiment with what works and what doesn't. Here are two shots I took at "magic hour" in two completely different parts of the world; both taken some 10 to 20 minutes before the sun set; perhaps that might help to explain the look and feel a bit better.

[Meisam]

Thanks.
The second shot looks bright.

You know long shadow occur from 4pm 5pm (now is fall here) until 6pm or 7pm. All nice warm light and long smooth shadow happen in that period. I will try again to take some shots again, I will looking for better location and better subjects. Also I like to use largest aperture I can. I mostly use AV (on my Cannon 550D). I think TV and Manual are more proper for special situations. Am I right?

[Manfred M]

Thanks.
The second shot looks bright.

You know long shadow occur from 4pm 5pm (now is fall here) until 6pm or 7pm. All nice warm light and long smooth shadow happen in that period. I will try again to take some shots again, I will looking for better location and better subjects. Also I like to use largest aperture I can. I mostly use AV (on my Cannon 550D). I think TV and Manual are more proper for special situations. Am I right?

The second shot was still fairly bright; it was taken in the Namib desert in early summer, so sunset was extremely fast. The largest aperture may not be the most appropriate, depending on the type of shot you are trying to do. When I do photography, I usually try to determine the depth of field that I want; and set the aperture to suit. Mist lenses are sharper when they are stopped down a couple of stops from wide open.

As for manual and shutter priority; I would not say they are for special situations; but dependent on the type of shot you are taking. I will use aperture priority when I am looking at what part of the image to have in focus, I use shutter priority when I am more concerned with handling motion in a particular way and I use manual when I want absolute control withough the camera overriding my shooting decisions.

[ajohnw]

I know that fotoxx is a linux package but if you don't know what tone mapping is then you have little chance of using it. Unfortunately people are using the term for hdr but cs6 still has a version of it see :It's not so flexible but has a control for several brightness levels.

http://www.adobepress.com/articles/a...50448&seqNum=2

I thought from detail in the top if the dogs head variations that you were working from raw and quite possibly loosing detail at that stage. I did suggest you took a look at ufraw and learned to get to grips with that. It's a graphical interface for some underlying code that does the actual raw conversion and is used by just about everybody including Adobe. Both are open source and free and run on Mac's, Linux and Windows. You will need to get at least partially to grips with the content of this page

http://ufraw.sourceforge.net/Guide.html

One of the advantages of the package is that it's completely into converting raw files and nothing else. It's very flexible. Files can be saved in 16 bit tiff, jpg or exported to another editor for things like tone mapping etc even to camera raw by the looks of the range of things in it. It has 2 quirks. It will set the black level automatically to a level that allows the maximum to be extracted from the raw file. This is often dark - it does this for professionals. A button to automatically brighten images was there but seems to have gone. Easily fixed by using auto exposure and probably making adjustments to the exposure slider. Later you might prefer making use of the tone curve to achieve most or some of the same effect. It's sort of cramming raw colour space into the output colour space. The auto black point on the curve often works out. The auto white usually doesn't for me. Rather than a couple of sliders any shape can given to the curve between these. Best stick to auto exposure and a straight line. The other quirk is that it retains it's last settings which mean going through the menu's and pressing the curled arrows to reset things. On the other hand if processing a number of shots, same day, time etc retaining them saves time.

One very useful aspect is at the bottom of the main window. It will indicate clipping in both the black and whites along with their percentages etc. Often a certain amount of clipping doesn't matter but at least it can't be missed if the options are ticked.

I would suggest always using camera white balance and that on auto in the camera. It's usually correct and the eyedropper balance in ufraw can often fix it up if it isn't. Playing with the colour temperature slider is tricky. The numbers can be adjusted more slowly.

All of the buttons get a name and a bit of an explanation when the mouse is hovered over them. Any change can be undone with the curled reset buttons so it's easy to play around and watch what happens.

The underlying message really is that if you don't get the raw conversion correct and at it's best it wont matter what lighting conditions you shoot in. That can be changed later with tone mapping and saturation etc changes anyway. Personally I feel you will have less trouble getting the most out of a raw file with ufraw. It's doesn't hide anything from you and gives complete control. It also doesn't take long to pick up. And after all what ever you use will have dcraw sitting at the bottom of it. You can usefully use that at times in the dos box too.

John

[ajohnw]

If some wants to see what tone mapping is in long hand this video may help. It's probably possible to do the same sort of things in cs??. It uses the gimp. Use of curves is mentioned but not shown. That can give control of the contrast range in picture that is changed

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMlKVDjJFfY

John

PS The Gimp because it's The Graphical Image Manipulation Program. Much ripped off for use in commercial software.

[Glenn NK]

Meisam:

If you are interested in landscape photography, I highly recommend this book:

http://www.amazon.com/National-Audub...der_155407195X

I refer to it often to refresh my memory.

I've been looking at your images, and the one of the sunset with the poles in the water interested me. What shutter speed, f/stop, ISO, focal length did you use (I can't find any EXIF information in your photos - which would help us understand what's going on)? In particular, the poles are quite blurry, and at that distance, they should be sharp.

From what I can see, you are not afraid to try things (that's good), but since so many objects are out of focus or blurry, I'm wondering about shooting technique. In particular, do you use a tripod, and if so, are you using mirror lockup or live view?

I just replied to another post about these aspects (post 16):

Hyperfocal distance - theory and practice

Glenn

[Meisam]

Hi guys
I tried to simulate GND filter effect with two shots with two different stop level and using mask with Gradient Tool of photoshop.
So this is what I achieved at the end.


IMG_2360 by Meisam Tj., on Flickr

My question is this:
Is this what GND filter do to shots?
I mean as you might notice there are some dark halo on top of the mountains. Are these halos happen to GND filter too? As I see many photos took with GND filter have same dark halos...

[Colin Southern]

Hi guys
I tried to simulate GND filter effect with two shots with two different stop level and using mask with Gradient Tool of photoshop.
So this is what I achieved at the end.


IMG_2360 by Meisam Tj., on Flickr

My question is this:
Is this what GND filter do to shots?
I mean as you might notice there are some dark halo on top of the mountains. Are these halos happen to GND filter too? As I see many photos took with GND filter have same dark halos...

Hi Meisam,

Just a slightly off-topic comment about GND filters. As you'll be aware, they allow you to protect foreground area detail against the stronger competing background incident light - but - there's a potential downside too, and I think that your photo is a good example of that. To my eye, your photo doesn't look believable because my brain EXPECTS the foreground to be darker (and yet it isn't).

What a GND does essentially is dynamic range compression - and what you'll normally want to do is compress the range into something the camera can capture in a single exposure (or the digital equivalent thereof) - but - not so much that the foreground competes against the sky.

So in the case of your example, I'd put another GND across the image to tone down the foreground so that the background is brighter, as the eye/brain would expect.

[MilT0s]

I also have this question Meisam. Never played with a GND but I was always wondering why not just take two different exposures and apply a gradient mask in PP (not HDR). You need a tripod in both cases (or not?). I have also seen many GND photos with dark halos usually on mountains.

An obvious answer is that you get troubled with moving subjects (e.g. this low altitude cloud) but probably there are more.

[Polar01]

Meisam: may I suggest something that I do, as you use CS6, you also can do this, when you are working in raw, at the bottom of the screen, click on the info found there. set it so when you open the file it opens as a smart object. What this does is when you open the file in CS6, you can reopen the raw file make an adjustment and return to CS.
For the image above this is what I might do. Open the file in CS, it opens as a smart object, now make a copy of that layer. Now the first layer has been worked for the ground, now click on the upper layer on the small square in the lower right. That will take you back to raw, now adjust for the sky only do not worry about the rest of the image. Once done hit save, which will take you back to CS. Now on that layer add a maske invert it to black, get a brush, select a size, softness, and adjust the opaqueness to 30%, now set the forground to white. As the mask conseales the upper layer, use the brush to reveal it, now allowing the new clouds and sky to be seen. As you brush over areas more you reveal more of the upper's layers sky. if too much change forground to black and paint back in some of the lower sky. I find that the clarity slider in raw and really strengthen the shape of the clouds so be a little heavery with it on the second layer.
Hope this is of some help.

Cheers:

Allan

[Colin Southern]

An obvious answer is that you get troubled with moving subjects (e.g. this low altitude cloud) but probably there are more.

Only when the movement is through the transitional area or if it causes reflections etc to not match up). From a PP point of view though they can be tricky to do a quality job with if the finished image is to be printed large.

With a jagged horizon, halos aren't so much the problem as darker bits at the tops of mountains etc.

[Meisam]

Hi Meisam,

Just a slightly off-topic comment about GND filters. As you'll be aware, they allow you to protect foreground area detail against the stronger competing background incident light - but - there's a potential downside too, and I think that your photo is a good example of that. To my eye, your photo doesn't look believable because my brain EXPECTS the foreground to be darker (and yet it isn't).

What a GND does essentially is dynamic range compression - and what you'll normally want to do is compress the range into something the camera can capture in a single exposure (or the digital equivalent thereof) - but - not so much that the foreground competes against the sky.

So in the case of your example, I'd put another GND across the image to tone down the foreground so that the background is brighter, as the eye/brain would expect.

Hi Colin, This is exactly what I am looking for! To making a photo in high dynamic range, I though both sky and foreground must be clear and bright and having no dark area in image...

Now I get confused! so if I have bright sky I should have dark foreground and if I have bright foreground, the background should be more bright! This is how brain acts and also camera does. Am I right?

I like to take photos which show both! sky and foreground! It means I need to use GND filter or some effect like HDR and LDR! Is this true?!

What I understand from your says is what I did was right but my foreground is too much bright! If I like to show foreground details what can I do to improve the shot!?!

[Colin Southern]

Hi Colin, This is exactly what I am looking for! To making a photo in high dynamic range, I though both sky and foreground must be clear and bright and having no dark area in image...

Now I get confused! so if I have bright sky I should have dark foreground and if I have bright foreground, the background should be more bright! This is how brain acts and also camera does. Am I right?

I like to take photos which show both! sky and foreground! It means I need to use GND filter or some effect like HDR and LDR! Is this true?!

What I understand from your says is what I did was right but my foreground is too much bright! If I like to show foreground details what can I do to improve the shot!?!

In summary - with images like yours, you want to have the foreground bright enough to show detail, but not so bright that it competes against the sky.

So the sky needs to be brighter than the foreground for the image to look believable - but not as bright as it actually was when you took the shot. What you're trying to do here is a compromise; you're trying to create an image that looks believable, but at the same time one that doesn't have such a big dynamic range that it can't be displayed properly.

I think that if you darken the foreground in your image a bit it'll look more saturated and less washed out.