Images are too Soft / Blurred?

testa12 · 29 Dec 2006 at 10:12

Hi,

Im just starting out really and going out to take photo's it's very dissapointing when i come back to load them up and find they are nearly all blurred/soft.

I have been able to get some decent quality, sharp photo's but very inconsistent and I cant work out why this is the case. I've even tried using the tripod to ensure a steady shot but to no avail, the images all look much to soft for my liking.

I'm using the standard kit lense on a Digital Rebel XT (American name for the EOS350D). Can anyone provide some pointers to get my images looking more sharp with finer detail?

Thanks!

Joe T · 29 Dec 2006 at 10:14

Could you post some examples? If you could include the EXIF info, then that would help a lot.

Sleepyd · 29 Dec 2006 at 11:32

testa12 said:
I'm using the standard kit lens

Try using it on a tripod at ISO 100/200, with the aperture set to F8-F11

My kit lens copy was awful at anything below F5.6.

SDK^ · 29 Dec 2006 at 12:10

Images from an D-SLR need to be sharpened in your image editor to maximise image quality.
A point & shoot camera does this internally, along with saturation and contrast but a D-SLR applies only small adjustments.

ElDude · 29 Dec 2006 at 12:29

The images from my 300D never needed sharpening (apart from the odd one with the 70-300), and definitely don't need it with my 30D.

SDK^ · 29 Dec 2006 at 13:17

ElDude said:
The images from my 300D never needed sharpening (apart from the odd one with the 70-300), and definitely don't need it with my 30D.

^ In your opinion

Canon and photo editing professionals advise that medium sharpening be applied to achieve the best quality.

Scam · 29 Dec 2006 at 19:14

SDK^ said:
^ In your opinion

Canon and photo editing professionals advise that medium sharpening be applied to achieve the best quality.

Assuming most of us here use the Unsharp Mask (for better or worse, thats another discussion), whats classed as 'medium' sharpening? I generally use USM @ 65% before i resize, then anywhere from 1-35% after resizing for web (mostly ~15%).

I looked into using 'bicubic sharpen' resizing instead of normal bicubic, but that applies far too much sharpening for my taste!

Prophet · 31 Dec 2006 at 15:14

Are there any guides for this? I've noticed that a lot of my shots look slightly blured compared to a canon 5mp point and click my mate has!

SDK^ · 31 Dec 2006 at 15:32

On a 8mp or higher pixel image Canon recomend the following USM settings.

Amount : 290%
Radius : 1.0
Threshold : 0

^^Gord^^ · 31 Dec 2006 at 16:13

SDK^ said:
On a 8mp or higher pixel image Canon recomend the following USM settings.

Amount : 290%
Radius : 1.0
Threshold : 0

Radius of 1.0 ? That seems to be a hell of a lot to me. I usually use:

Amount : 300%
Radius : 0.3
Threshold : 0

Jotun · 31 Dec 2006 at 16:41

Are you focusing manualy or is the lens set to automatic?

If you use manual focus, you may need to adjust the diopter settings. It's something I didn't do, and then was having a go using extension tubes. I kept wondering why the images looked so much better though the lens compared to when I reviewed them later. Then I realised the diopter setting needed adjusting.

Of course if you have the lens set to auto then ignore that

I'll second what Sleepyd said. When shooting I set the camera to Av mode and I've found 9.5 seems to give best results for me with the kit lens.

Also I bought some cheap lenses off the bay, fairly old fully manual primes, and a lens mount adaptor, and they can produce some fairly sharp images :cool:

SDK^ · 31 Dec 2006 at 17:00

^^Gord^^ said:
Radius of 1.0 ? That seems to be a hell of a lot to me. I usually use:

Amount : 300%
Radius : 0.3
Threshold : 0

Raduis of 1 is correct

It's not overdone at all - see examples below

Not sharpened

Sharpened using setting USM settings above

^^Gord^^ · 31 Dec 2006 at 17:07

I've just had photoshop fired up and was trying this a few photos. They look ok at 25% but I get a lot of halo'ing at 100% with a radius of 1.0.

PS, what the hell you taking photos of with that setup, atoms!? :eek:

SDK^ · 31 Dec 2006 at 17:19

^^Gord^^ said:
I've just had photoshop fired up and was trying this a few photos. They look ok at 25% but I get a lot of halo'ing at 100% with a radius of 1.0.

Well 100% is a print size of 48"x32" and you clearly wouldn't run such sharpening at that size. 25% is a print size of around 12x8 so if you''re doing a smaller print then you need to sharpen more

^^Gord^^ said:
PS, what the hell you taking photos of with that setup, atoms!?

Kenco tubes and macro lens is only roughly 2.2x life size.

Example - not cropped

^^Gord^^ · 31 Dec 2006 at 17:50

SDK^ said:
Well 100% is a print size of 48"x32" and you clearly wouldn't run such sharpening at that size. 25% is a print size of around 12x8 so if you''re doing a smaller print then you need to sharpen more

Mmmh, you've given me something to think about there.

So, do you sharpen at the full 8MP and then crop into the image?

Nice picture of the fly by the way. :cool:

Prophet · 2 Jan 2007 at 10:36

Thanks for the info on this

I'm going to have a play tonight on some of my favorite images. Hopefully it will make a noticable difference