Suckness battle: Me VS My gear !

[Raysha]

Greetings,

I am back after some weeks, I had a lot school work and stuff... anyways...

Its been a few months since I bought my Camera, I bought it from a local company which offers the best of the prices in the Middle East (their prices are almost same as Amazon & B&H), and the price was about 280$ cheaper than most of the other local sellers.

The problem is that I am starting to feel like something is wrong, I am doubting the body and specially the body, even though it acts just like its brothers.

I feel like the images I get are soft, and they are supposed to be a lot more sharper... (like when I shoot a head to chest portrait, I don't notice the tiny details of the eyebrows), The results are kinda the same using the sharp 50mm f1.8 lens, so I don't think the 18-55 is the issue.

I have experimented with different things like, sharpening in post, using ISO 100, fast shutters... etc... but, I never felt satisfied about the overall look and feel of the images I cook, specially the details.. sharpness bcz I LOVE em !.. and thats why I upgraded to a DSLR.

Repeated failures & the continues drop of the beauty of the pics I make is really discouraging me to continue to shoot and edit ( I love editing )..

Somethings must be wrong about me or my gear, I failed to find the mistakes that might have been done by me, also I gotta mention that I got the tendency to put blame on the gear I use.

[FrankMi]

Just a thought, Redhwan. If you know an active photographer that you respect, perhaps you could get that person to evaluate the camera for you. If they come to the same conclusion then perhaps it is time to have the camera professionally refurbished?

[Manfred M]

Redhwan - It's hard to comment without seeing some examples of the problem; especially with the EXIF metadata attached. Is the performance problem related to a specific lens or do all lenses have this issue?

[davidedric]

Best thing to do is to post a couple of images here, the out of camera if you can. I think that some of the folks could help. As I think you know, the kit you have should be able to produce excellent images

[Brev00]

Soft compared to what? To what you have achieved previously? To what you have seen achieved by others? To what you wish you could achieve?

There are a few possibilities:

1. You are overanalyzing your images looking for flaws when they are actually fine. I mean, who needs to see the tiny details of an eyebrow unless one is doing an eyebrow macro? This comment suggests you are looking at images at 100-200x for flaws. It is better to look at the image at a normal view for aesthetics and only magnify so much to see noise or sharpening artifacts.

2. You are shooting with extreme settings. For example, you might be using f 1.8 for portraits when stopping down a touch would enhance depth of field and put the lens in its sweet spot. Posting an image as has been suggested would help us evaluate this.

3. Someone dropped the camera in transit and there is an issue. This is always possible and one should not always blame the photographer when something real is going on.

I am sure there are more points but that is enough for now. Good luck!

[Shadowman]

Also, soft in what format (jpeg or RAW) and does the photo look sharp on the camera monitor?

[inkista]

Just me, but stop shooting wide open at f/1.8 with the 50. The 50/1.8 II is considerably softer wide open than stopped down into the f/2.8-f/4 range. f/4 is actually the sweet spot of that lens.

Shooting with most lenses wide open is typically using it at its weakest point--where it's softest, shows the most vignetting, and the most chromatic aberration. Stop the 50/1.8 down to f/4, increase your ISO, and don't make your DoF target for focusing millimeters thin, and you'll have a lot better luck.

Also watcha shutter speed. And consider getting a flash. Just because the 50 "goes to 11" (or in this case f/1.8) doesn't mean you have to use it there all the time by default. Choose your tradeoffs.

Just my 2¢.

[Raysha]

I will have my body checked by someone I like... WHEN I get the chance to meet him since he is way too busy a guy.

I always shoot in RAW, Picture style: Standard... These are shots from a single shooting day, I don't recall using but the 50mm f1.8 II with my speedlight 430EXII as a fill since the ambient lighting was acceptable, I kept changing the flash's angle when I felt like it, there are shots when light was bounced off the ceiling, directly pointed or pointed at an angle to the subject. I avoided the pain using the flash off camera bcz I was in an exhibition which I did also participate in...

The RAW files were converted to highest quality JPEG using lightroom and then uploaded :
http://www.flickr.com/photos/113372983@N05/

(Upload didn't complete yet)

IMG_4281 is tweaked a bit btw...

[Mike Buckley]

It will be interesting to see what others have to say but it's clear to me that nothing is wrong with your equipment.

I wish I could see the EXIF data but I can't because I don't use software that displays it while displaying the image on the Internet and the site you are using doesn't allow me to download your images to my computer (not sure why) where I could see the EXIF data. You will get better help if you provide at least the shutter speed and aperture of all images.

Photo 1: Increase output sharpening and contrast in the midtones to enhance the sharpness
Photo 2: The right sleeve is sharper than the face, probably due too low a shutter speed, too small a depth of field and focusing on the sleeve, or both.
Photo 3: Notice that the sleeve at the wrist is sharper than the rest of the image. That's probably because of the same issues encountered in Photo 2.
Photo 4: Very nice sharpness on the near side of the face. The rest isn't sharp probably because of the depth of field that you used. This has the makings of being a very nice image.
Photo 5: Everything is sharp from his right shoulder to his right eye. The left eye isn't as sharp probably because it isn't included in the depth of field.
Photo 6: His eyes and most of his face are reasonably sharp but could be improved with a bit more output sharpening.
Photo 7: The subject is reasonably sharp but could be improved with more output sharpening
Photo 8: The left part of the scarf and a very small amount of the headband is very sharp. The rest of the image is blurred because those areas are not included in the depth of field. It's also possible that your shutter speed was too slow and stopped the action only in the two areas that are sharp.
Photo 9: The most important parts of the face are quite sharp. Well done!
Other photos: Same general issues described above.

[Raysha]

Whoa~h ... I thought Flickr and 500pixles were the most popular pro photo-hosting sties... 500px made my pics look weeeeeeird so I went for Flickr.

After clicking on an image, scroll down a bit, on the right side there is "Additional info" click show more... and there you go ! you can see shutter-aperture-iso-lens

[Mike Buckley]

Ahhhhhhh. I see the EXIF data now. Thanks!

All of the images were taken using a shutter speed of 1/100. Though you can certainly stop the action of a human in these situations at that shutter speed, a lot of times it won't happen. I always shoot at no less than 1/200 for this type of photography and I much prefer shooting at 1/500 to have the confidence that I'll get sharp images.

Having said that, your images are generally quite sharp somewhere in each photo. If you want more sharpness in them I'm confident that you could increase the output sharpening without adding artifacts.

Much of your issue probably has to do with getting more experience with depth of field. As the best example, Photo 8 is very sharp in the areas that I described in my previous post. If you didn't crop the image, it's apparent that the camera is closer to the subject than in any of the other images. You also used a smaller depth of field (larger aperture) in that photo than in any of the other photos. Both factors resulted in a smaller depth of field than in any of the other images. So, it's understandable to me that your depth of field in that image is too small and that even if you did want such a small depth of field you should have focused on the near eye (which did not happen).

All of this is perfectly understandable considering that you're apparently new to shooting with a DSLR. The good news is that your camera seems to be working just fine. The even better news is that you have lots of really enjoyable photos to look forward to making once you gain a command of the basic practicalities pertaining to shutter speed and depth of field. I recommend that you review the tutorials here at CiC covering those subjects.

[chauncey]

Sound advice from Mike.
Get to know your DOF, info here...http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html.
As well as taking advantage of Canon's learning center...http://learn.usa.canon.com/home/home.shtml

Your starting a journey my friend...enjoy the trip.

[Raysha]

Thank you both Mike & Chaun

Ummm did you take in account that I shot with a flash? I intended to freeze motion with the flash not the shutter, So... if I am not mistaken; Ambient light is controlled by shutter speed and the F-stop decides how much of flash light will get in the camera, so I felt that 1/100th gives an acceptable, slightly darker background than the foreground. I shot in Tv so the F-stop was decided by the camera.

DOF... you know, It kinds easy to explain the relationship of DOF with F-stop, camera-subject distance & subject-back ground distance, but when shooting I barely can "think" or "recall" all those geeky stuff, I just use the mid-focus point to focus, re-composite and shoot ~

I am not sure if I should be relieved yet bcz i just felt something was weird, and when I checked out I discovered that Flickr did apply some... no, A LOT of sharpening to my pictures (I guess thats why it took them a lot of time to upload only 12 pictures) soooo...... ?_?

[Mike Buckley]

No, I didn't take into account that you used flash. Take that as a compliment that that is not readily apparent in the photos at least not to my eyes. The EXIF info that I saw doesn't address whether or not flash was used, though perhaps a more detailed display of the data is included somewhere that I didn't notice.

I just use the mid-focus point to focus, re-composite and shoot

Doing that can certainly lead to the problems that you experienced when using such a shallow depth of field. You will consistently achieve better results if you use a larger depth of field, a focus point that makes it possible to not have to recompose after focusing, or both. When you recompose while using such a small depth of field, the most important parts of the image that you want to be in focus will often no longer be included in the depth of field.

[Raysha]

I see I see... Thank you :P now I know a mistake I have been making unconsciously.

I am not sure if I should be relieved yet bcz i just felt something was weird, and when I checked out I discovered that Flickr did apply some... no, A LOT of sharpening to my pictures (I guess thats why it took them a lot of time to upload only 12 pictures) soooo...... ?_?.

You missed the important part ^^ Flicker added some sharpness to the images (so the images arent really "raw", does that fact change anything ?

[Manfred M]

Redhwan - I've looked at the images you have posted and at the metadata. A few points (some of which may be a repeat).

1. Your images are sharp (or as Mike points out, parts of them are). This tells me that your equipment is working properly.

2. There is some lack of sharpness throughout the image, and that is there for a number of reasons:

- Shallow Depth of Field (DoF) - at f/4 you are shooting fairly wide open, so areas in / near the focal plane will be sharp and areas in front and hehind this will not be. This is actually what you want compositionally as you as shooting portraits; you want the face of your subject to be the centre of attention and want the background to be a bit blurred.

- You are shooting RAW; this means that you are not getting the benefit of in-camera sharpening and contrast adjustment. In a RAW output; you are getting the impact of the Anti-alias filter built into your camera; which adds a bit of blur to prevent (or at least reduce the risk) of artifacts like Moire patterns. The first step when you work in RAW is to sharpen a tiny bit to fiz that issue; this is referred to as input sharpening. You may also want to locally sharpen some parts of the image (eyebrows are one place where you might want to consider doing this); this is referred to as in-process sharpening. Finally you want to sharpen so things look right at the size you will be display (this is referred to as output sharpening). All sharpening should be done when the image is viewed at 100% size.

- focus point - in portraiture, you should be using point focus, rather than some averaging (Multi-segment in Canon speak). The trick is to focus on the eye closest to the camera and then recompose. This means putting the focus point on the eye, pressing your shutter half-way to lock the exposure / focus point and then recomposing the image. As long as the closest eye is in focus, the image will look good, even if the rest is a bit less sharp (this is a very common technique for portraiture)/

-Shutter speed -1/100 should be fine, but try a higher shutter speed to see if it helps.

3. These are strong images; subtle changes in your technique will improve these minor deficiencies.

4. You could be "pixel peeping". Look at images from a normal viewing distance and judge them that way; not with your nose to the screen and with the images enlarged to conditions that you would never look at them.

5. I see that you have taken these images with flash. I assume that you are using the built in flash on your camera? If so, this will give you flat lighting and some "hot spots" that will result in loss of detail that can look like softness.

[Raysha]

hmmmm... well now I am relieved... All of you have my gratitude.

About the flash, Nah I wasn't using the built in flash. In fact, I hate it. I used the 430EX, pointing upward to the ceiling most of the time.

[SteveF]

In order to check your camera I would set it to green box mode on the dial and then go outside and shoot some images. Green box will/should completely control your camera and choose focus points etc and produce jpegs.

On the Canon software you will be able to see whch focus points have been used and is the image sharp at this point? If yes on all of the files then the camera would seem to be ok.

Don't shoot raw on P setting until you've tried the first scenario as raw processors impart user error. Testing the camera on full automatic is a simple test and quick to evaluate.

We'll be interested to see how you get on.

[Manfred M]

hmmmm... well now I am relieved... All of you have my gratitude.

About the flash, Nah I wasn't using the built in flash. In fact, I hate it. I used the 430EX, pointing upward to the ceiling most of the time.

Bounce flash is good, but I find I don't generally like the results for portraits; but it is often the only way to do so for group shots. I find that I like better control of the shadow detail, especially when shooting men.

As you get more comfortable in shooting, you should look at using light modifiers to see what that gets you.

[DanK]

I agree with Mike and Manfred. I don't think this is a problem with your equipment. Becoming more skilled at focusing at the correct point in the image and controlling depth of field are the big issues. E.g., in IMG_4281, part of the kaffiyeh is sharp, but most of the face isn't. Sharpening is also important, as Manfred noted. All digital images require sharpening. When you shoot jpeg, the camera sharpens for you. When you shoot raw (which I think you should continue doing), you need to do that yourself.

With respect to flash: in a well-lit setting, Canon cameras and flashes will use the flash as fill flash, so shutter speed can still matter. However, I doubt that shutter speed is as big of an issue as focusing, depth of field, and sharpening.

I suggest you spend some time studying depth of field, using something like dofmaster on the web. It would also help to take some shots when you have time to play around, using the depth of field preview button on your camera before taking shots, or taking a series at different apertures and comparing them.