Getting Sharper Eyes

Moogle Pepper · March 18, 2008

I been trying to get sharp eyes in my people photos. I, don't have examples with me, but I was wondering how to do so. I aim and focus for the eyes when I shoot people, but they don't come out as crystal clear as the photos I see here.

SloYerRoll · March 18, 2008

Part of sharp eyes is everything else not being as sharp. Make sense?

What aperture do you shoot with?
What focus mode do you shoot in?

Moogle Pepper · March 18, 2008

Aperature is at 3.5
and I been shooting in Manual in one shot mode.

SloYerRoll · March 18, 2008

Moogle Pepper wrote:

Aperature is at 3.5
and I been shooting in Manual in one shot mode.

What focus type do you use?
Zone, Spot etc? Sometimes your smart camera doesn't know you want to have your eyes tack sharp and takes an (very) educated guess.

BTW: what lens type are you using? I'm not heavy on the following at all. But lens IQ has allot to do w/ how sharp a shot look straight out of camera.

Anyone here know where Shay's tutorial on lens IQ is located?

Moogle Pepper · March 18, 2008

I use spot metering and a 50 f/1.4

tisun · March 18, 2008

Indoor or outdoor? I have that lens and it has a terrible time getting a spot-on focus indoor when lighting is less than ideal. Outdoor, it's better but not great.

SloYerRoll · March 18, 2008

So I'm guessing spot metering is on the eyes...
Can you post an example? Please make sure to include exif.:D

gregneil · March 18, 2008

Do you have any examples to show us? Are you also sharpening in photoshop or another application after the fact? Most images will need some additional sharpening...

Moogle Pepper · March 18, 2008

I was trying to get eyes this razor sharp and clear:
http://dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=87996

Maybe it's my subject: Asian and always in motion nephew.

exif

Well this time I had my aperature at 10..

Chrissiebeez_NL · March 18, 2008

Hi moogle pepper!

not an expert on this matter (or any matter) but looking at your exif i dont think you can talk about trying to get sharp eyes when your exposure time is 1/13 sec on a 50mm lens (non stabilised). with that kind of exposure time you are bound to get camera shake and motion blur that will take away from the sharpness. Try it again in nice light or with a flash maybe so you can get a exposure time of 1/200 sec. that should be enough to not get blur on most occasions.

Moogle Pepper · March 18, 2008

hmm.. you are right.

I'll try again, hopefully, at 1/200 with better light and flash.

SloYerRoll · March 18, 2008

Light is definitely your friend for this.
A strobe set at low power pulses at around 1/10,000 so even if your shutter speed is a bit slow. It should still freeze all the action unless your subject is already well lit.

pathfinder · March 18, 2008

Shooting kids at 1/13th sec handheld is absolutely guaranteed to give less than stellar sharpness. I think this image looks pretty sharp given that choice of shutter speed. Typically you want at least 1/focal length of the lens as the minimal shutter speed, so a 50mm lens would suggest a minimum shutter speed of 1/50th. For kids, I would suggest a minimum of 1/100th. Flash is even better, because is is less than 1/5000th ( even though the shutter is open longer than that).

Camera's AF systems tend to want to find straight, high contrast lines, and eye tend to be curved, and sometimes are shaded with lower contrast light. You must place ONE AF point ( and ONLY one )precisely on the eye, and force the AF system to focus precisely on the eye, not the nose, not the hair, not the ear, etc. Getting sharp images is not merely pointing a camera and hoping Auto Focus will capture sharp images for you, especially at apertures wider than f5.6.

The other factor is learning to sharpen properly in Adobe RAW converter 4.3. Doing that properly will take sharply captured images to Razor Sharpness.

Getting Sharper Eyes

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