Fuzzy Portraits

Purest Light Photography · June 3, 2009

I have a Sony dSLR350x and right now I am using the DT 4-5.6/55-200 lens I'm having issues with the sharpness of my photographs. I do natural light portrait photography of mostly babies and children. Lately it seems like only 1/3 of my pictures are coming out crisp and in focus the rest seem just a bit soft. Am I doing something wrong? Does anyone have any tips for me. I just take the pictures...I'm NOT an expert at cameras :dunno Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks a bunch.

du8die · June 3, 2009

Posting a few examples would be VERY helpful. That way we can see what's going on.

Also if you can post EXIF information (ISO, Shutter Speed, Aperture) that would also be very helpful.

Thanks,
d8

Purest Light Photography · June 3, 2009

sorry
Sorry it is my first time asking for this kind of help on here. Thanks for taking the time.
ISO-400, f/4.0, shutter speed 1/160 sec it is the same for both.
I did do some skin smoothing on the pics the first pic is sharp and the second one his eyes seem blurry to me,

Purest Light Photography · June 3, 2009

blurry
this one looks blurry

lilmomma · June 3, 2009

I'm not an expert, but are you pointing the focal points on the eyes? in the first one it looks like it is on the tie under the chin and the rest is soft. the second one is pretty blurry so I can't tell where the focal point would have landed. the blur in that may be caused by motion either on the camera or from the baby (likely the baby)

Anyone else feel free to chime in.....

Purest Light Photography · June 4, 2009

Thank you for replying this is really frustrating for me I will do a whole shoot and not all of my pics will be clear. Is there anyway I can get consistently sharp images. Do you think I am doing something incorrect on my camera? I used to work in a studio and never had this problem but I was also never in charge of the camera/tech stuff. The camera was always set up and ready for me to use.

lilmomma · June 4, 2009

There's a discussion that might help...

http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=131681

The only other thing is like I said before, watch where your focal points are landing and hold real still. It looks like you are using window light...my guess is in the studio the light was more powerful so they could set the shutter speed a lot higher to eleminate motion blur. Other than that just read the thread that I linked for some great advice. Good luck

mercphoto · June 4, 2009

Purest Light Photography wrote:

I just take the pictures...I'm NOT an expert at cameras

Learn then.

Seriously though, learn your tools.

At 1/160 shutter speed that is plenty fast remove any motion blur if the baby is moving, unless the baby is moving pretty fast. But those poses don't look like the baby would be. Plus if you are using flash that helps freeze motion anyway, as the burst of light from the flash is very brief. It acts like a strobe in a disco does.

Only thing I can think of is your focus point is falling on skin, which has almost not texture or contrast, and is therefore difficult for the camera to acquire a focus lock on. You need to let the camera have something with contrast and detail (i.e. edges) to judge focus on. I don't think you're giving the camera what it needs in order to do its job. And this gets us back to learning your tools...

pathfinder · June 4, 2009

In the first photo the tie is the point of focus.

In the second image, the tie or the childs diaper shows the sharpest edges.

I do not shoot with a Sony camera, so take what I suggest with a grain of salt.

I do know that Canon cameras ( that I use ) offer the photographer a choice of letting the camera choose the AF point from among its several AF points in the viewfinder, and also allows the shooter to choose one, and only one AF point, so that the shooter can be quite precise in what the camera is focusing on. My experience ( with Canon anyway ) is that the camera is never right in its choice of AF points ( well usually not right, the higher priced 1Series does better than the APS version ) - but the fact is that I get much better focused images, when I carefully place a single AF point precisely on the portion of the subject that I want in focus, and then DO NOT move the camera to recompose.

If you really want precise focus, this is how it is done.

Be aware, most AF systems have a strong preference to choose crisp, straight, high contrast lines over softer more organic features like eyebrows, like Bill alluded to. They also tend to choose things nearer the camera over things farther away. If you want to decide where the AF needs to be, you need to be very precise to prevent these kinds of choices on the camera's part. I call this "riding herd" on the AF system.

Tosser · June 4, 2009

1/160 may be a little slow at 200mm. That focal length will exacerbate any subject or camera movement, or both, so a faster shutter may help.

Also agree with use a single AF point and focus on an area with some contrast. Also, if you are close with the lens at 200mm or so, you might try more DOF.

kirkt · June 10, 2009

In both images you are shooting in Auto Exposure, Shutter Priority mode, which forces the camera to fix the shutter speed and choose an acceptable ISO and aperture combination to complete the exposure calculation. You may be making this choice consciously - shooting at 1/160 sec - or that choice may be somewhat arbitrary. The focal length you have chosen, according to the EXIF data, is 55mm in both shots (or 82mm as the crop factor equivalent). At 55mm, you probably don't need to be shooting at 1/160 sec - you could be shooting at 1/60 or so to get away with minimizing camera shake. With the black background you probably don;t need to be so aggressive with what the camera's choice for aperture has provided in terms of a shallow DOF of f/4. Also, if you are applying skin smoothing to the image you posted, it may be affecting their sharpness for our evaluation. If you could post 100% crops of the unaltered images, that would make things easier to evaluate.

So, why does this make a difference? Well, the camera is giving you a pretty small DOF/acceptable area of focus under the constraint of shutter priority. If you are looking for a sharp image across the entire child, or you want a little more room for focus error, you probably want to stop down the aperture to something more like f/5.6 or f/8 at least. To do this and still get the equivalent exposure, you need to slow the shutter speed (leave the shutter open longer) or increase the ISO (increase the sensitivity of the sensor). By changing the shutter speed from 1/160 sec to 1/60 sec you get over 1 stop to play with in EV - you can then change the aperture from f/4 to f/5.6 or even a bit more stopped down and get a little greater zone of acceptable focus, assuming you keep the ISO at 400. If you move closer to the subject and shoot a slightly wider angle, you can get slightly more DOF as well - but the distortion in the image may start to affect the image. Unfortunately, when you shoot with an auto exposure mode like shutter priority, you don't get to make all of these decisions - the camera does.

So, as stated previously by other posters, learn a little more about your camera and then take the leap into manual mode. This subject seems pretty still, so you can really push the aperture and shutter speed combo with the relatively low ISO to minimize noise. This all assumes that you are not going to use any flash to help. Also, you may want to consider manual focus as well, if your ambient lighting is not giving you enough contrast in the area you are trying to get AF to lock onto. A dedicated flash may have an AF assist beam that can aid in helping AF in low light - even if you set the flash to low power and bounce off of a ceiling or a piece of white board (ie, so that very little flash is getting onto your subject), the AF assist beam may get you better results.

None of this is camera-specific in theory, just in its camera-specific implementation.

The longwinded reply just reminds me that all things in photography are inter-related but it all starts with controlling and capturing the light falling on the subject. To give yourself some room for error in terms of focus and sharpness, fix the aperture to something liberal like f/8. Practice shooting a still subject, or subjects, that gives you the full range of highlights, midtones and shadows under your lighting conditions - like a white terry cloth towel or something similar with a range of tones and textures that include things like the large folds in the towel as well as the small loops in the towel's material. Note that, in addition to the ability of the lens to focus light and produce a "sharp" image, perceived sharpness, or image quality, also depends on contrast within the image elements, so nailing your exposure under the lighting conditions within the scene is critical. The first image has more contrast in the critical area of the face compared to the second image, so it also appears "sharper", even if 100% crops of both images in the face area reveal that the focus is similar. Use your camera's spot meter to sample the highlight and shadow areas of the experiment subject (ie., the towel or still life elements) and note the variation in the camera's meter readings. Then set up, choose your exposure to include the critical areas, and fire away! Look at the effect of exposure on the sharpness and perceived "sharpness" of the image. In your experiment, you may want to turn off (or experiment with) the on-board processing of sharpness, contrast and saturation that typically takes place prior to producing and saving your final image on the memory card.

Then you can mess with the other AUTO stuff like White Balance, etc....

Then you can mess with shooting RAW...

Have fun, and I apologize for being too simplistic, stating things that you already know, or being inadvertently obtuse.

Kirk

Fuzzy Portraits

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