What am I doing wrong?

Terrence

I started dSLR about 18 months ago and I feel I have a solid understanding of the basics of photography (exposure, how the camera works, etc.). My nature photography seems to be doing well and has improved a lot over the last year. Where I am still failing is indoor photography and people in general. All of my shots look soft, even when I think I have the best of conditions and I just can not understand what the heck I am doing wrong.

I'm reading threads here and studying people's work and so far the knowledge I have gained is not translating into setting and using the camera well. Forget my artistic eye for a minute, because I admit that is horrible right now when it comes to people. Please help me tear apart a shot and understand where my basic failings are. I am so frustrated, I am almost ready to sell my kit and give it up. Talk me off the ledge.

Here goes. I'm going to give nauseating detail to make it as easy as I can for someone to spot the problems.

The other night I took a series of test shots to learn more about flash. Both sets were shot between 6:30PM and 7:00PM in a room with two 100W incandescent floor lamps. No ambient light to speak of coming through the windows as the sun was already down. I used a 30D, Canon 50mm f/1.8, and 580EX with "better bounce card" hot-shoe mounted and aimed at the white ceiling. The 30D was set to manual, shutter to 1/160, ISO 200, and I varied the aperture from f/1.8 to f/11 in 1/3 stop increments. I used the center focus point on my wife's left knee and did not recompose. All shots stored as RAW and shot handheld.

The two examples below are the f/8 shot, which I though was the sharpest looking of the bunch. The first was processed in Lightroom for white balance, minor exposure fixes and to remove Lightroom's default sharpening settings. The second was put through CS3 for the addition of USM (200%, 0.9, 2).

When I look at either version it seems soft to me. At 100% it looks awful to me and I see a lot of noise in the blue pants and red pillow. It would be great if the answer was my eyes suck, but I'm betting that ain't it.

My goal is to make sharp and crisp candids like this shooting handheld. I know it can be done but I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong. Dgrin Superfriends! Help me. Please? :confused


NO USM
Original, full size: http://terrencej.smugmug.com/photos/134825241-O.jpg


With USM (200%, 0.9, 2)
Original, full size: http://terrencej.smugmug.com/photos/134825320-O.jpg

pathfinder

When shooting with flash, camera movement usually is not an issue, and this does not look like camera movement to my eye either.

You say you focused with the center AF point on your wife's knee and did not recompose. It sounds like you did almost everything right, Terrence.

Unfortunately, your wife's knee is enshrouded in soft, black, fleece pants - not an easy, sharply bordered item for AF to grab and focus on.. The AF systems are not that smart, and need all the help we can give them at times.

As I look at both images in full size, I think the sharpest area is the yellow ball right next the the child's fingers. This area does look sharp. I suspect this is the area the AF really focused on. I would expect a little more DOF at f8, but this image loooks underexposed to me also. That would explain the noise in the darker areas if they are underexposed.

I think this image's white point was set to the specular reflection on the ball, and that is why the image does not seem to have much pop, but looks flat. That also makes the image look less sharp.

I have not seen the raw file so I do not know how much + exposure increase was added in Lightroom.

You might reshoot using several AF points that are further back into the frame, as the ball seems to be the closest object in this image and the AF system in the 20D ( and I suspect the 30D as well) really favors the closest item in the frame - particuarly if it has sharp, contrasty lines versus soft black smooth contours.

Khaos

Yep. Focus needs contrast. If you would of chose multipoint AF for that shot I can guarantee none of the points would of chose her pants.

Also, unless the room is very well lit, I always use ISO 400. I guess that's a hangover from when I used film, but I get better results.

When I'm shooting flash indoors, I take a couple of test shots and look at the histogram. From there I'll adjust the fash exposure by thirds to get the histogram to where it should be. I do that for any room changes, because the light will differ. It's more work, but when you get the exposure dead on, you get a sharp shot.

I will also play with shutter speed and aperture. I generally never go much beyond f/5.6 with flash handheld.

It takes awhile to learn the flash, I'm still learning, but once you start getting it, the results are worth the time.

wxwax

pathfinder wrote:

I would expect a little more DOF at f8,

Excellent answers.

But this point troubles me. I too, would expect more depth of field at f8.

Terrence

Thanks for the tips. I'll put them to work over the next few days and see what happens. Even in daytime, my house is too dim to shoot without flash, so I need to master this.

I am confused why the f/8 and up to f/11 shots don't have much DOF. Also, why is ISO200 showing so much noise? Looking at the histos of the RAW files, I do see a lot of them pushed to the left half, and there is some shadow clipping, so I assume that explains the softness?

I get scattered when I have too many options to choose from, so what do you think about staying between f/4 and f/7.1 and 1/160 and 1/250 for my learning? I kind of need a "golden rule" to start from and work up and down scale from there. Until I can make a really sharp photo, it will be hard for me to understand what I am doing wrong. Is that a bad way to think about this?

Also, I assume the 50mm f/1.8 should be able to produce tack sharp pictures, correct? It's not the best glass out there, but everyone seems to love this little guy. I'm asking so I can rule that in or out as a factor. If it can not produce tack sharp shots and I want tack sharp, I'll be banging my head against the wall trying to get them.

pathfinder

Terrence,

If your histograms on the camera are to the left, the image is underexposed. You want to have enough light/exposure that the histogram tends toward the right/highlight side of the histogram. Not enough to blow out the highlights, but you do not want the histogram to the left if possible, and with flash it is definitely possible to get enough light.

When the histogram is too far to the left, you can bring the values back in post processing but you introduce a lot of digital noise in doing so. I suspect that is where the noise in the reds and blacks are coming from. ISO 200 should be pretty clean from a noise standpoint.

The 50mm f1.8 is well regarded. It MIGHT be sharper at f5.6 than f8, but it should certainly provide good images at f8 also.

Start out with ISO 200, f5.6 1/160th. You are not collecting any ambient light, so there is no real reason to use a shorter shutter speed. Shoot in Manual Mode on the camera and ETTL on the flash unit. Bounce the light of the white ceiling, while throwing some light forward with the foamie diffuser. Should work fine. Have your wife hold a printed magazine or something sharp edged to focus on. You will not get really sharp edges on soft printed cloth.

I didn't think your images were that bad, and I think they can be sharpened harder in Photoshop. The ball was in focus remember.

Since this is a learning experience, try turning the 'in camera sharpening' up to +3 or so also on your 30D. See if that is not some of what you are missing. DSLRs come set to provide rather soft, low contrast images since the assumption is that you will be preocessing these images in an image editor.

LuckyBob

Great advice from everyone above. I've only got three minor things to contribute. Canon's ETTL system seems to need positive FEC in a lot of situations; if you haven't read up on how the system works internally, doing so can really help one's understanding of how to set the camera up, particularly for indoor shots involving people (http://photonotes.org/articles/eos-flash/).

Secondly, since we as humans are quite observant of other humans, problems with focus, color, or brightness stick out like sore thumbs in photos. Photos of several of the same species of animal look all bascially the same to us, but put several people next to each other and we can go on and on about what makes them different; we're instinctively wired that way. A long time ago I read that shots of people can have all sorts of problems as long as the eyes are in focus and the skin on the face is the right brightness and hue; this seems to hold true for every portrait I shoot. The eyes are particularly important since it's where people tend to look first when seeing a person for the first time.

The lens may be part of the issue also. The quality control on the 50mm f/1.8 is all over the map, so you may have gotten a bad copy. Since even good copies aren't known to nail focus every time, I try to get several shots of a particular pose/situation while trying to get the eyes in focus and select the best of the lot, using the eyes as my guideline. Based on the fact that you focused on your wife's knee and the ball was in focus instead, you might have a front-focusing copy - I'd run some tests on it to see if the lens is at fault. Also, according to Photozone.de, a good copy starts to hit its difraction limits at >f/5.6, so you're actually hurting the sharpness above that, plus running into decentering issues.

Terrence

Thanks all. This feedback is really helping me understand this better.

I tried a few shots at f/5.6, 1/160 at ISO 200 and ISO 400. I have not processed them yet, but I found the shots with +2/3 and +1 FEC to have the best looking in-camera histos. I'll definitely read that article to understand the inner working better.

I'll set up some tripod shots with mirror lock up and remote shutter of well define still life objects and see if I can uncover any lens quality issues.

Thanks again everybody. If you're ever in NYC, I'll buy ya a few beers.

pathfinder

Terrence

If you think the lens is not up to par, try the same shots with your Sigma 17-70 for comparison.

Lenses can be bad, but my experience is that the lens is usually not the problem.

Sounds like a little +FEC will do wonders too.

Terrence

OK. Shot under the same lighting conditions at roughly the same time of day. This time I used +1 FEC, f/5.6, 1/200 and ISO 400 and I think I have much better results. I don't see the same noisiness and the histo looks pretty good. I tried to focus a little past my son's face, so at f/5.6 he is a little soft, but my wife's face and the book look damn good to me.

Below are two versions of the same shot. The first has only basic corrections in Lightroom for white balance (set to "Flash") and to turn down the default sharpening settings. The second is the same file but touched up in PS CS3 to set black point, white point, curves and USM a la the tutorials here on dgrin.

So, do these look better than my previous post? Does it look like I am on the right track?


Original: http://terrencej.smugmug.com/photos/135035066-O.jpg


Original: http://terrencej.smugmug.com/photos/135034972-O.jpg

pathfinder

No problem with sharpness here.

I might have backed off the +FEC to 2/3 or so, her left shoulder is a bit bright perhaps.

You are definitely learning to fish for yourself, Terrence.