what's the secret to razor sharp images

[g dan mitchell]

<p>Lighting... and color balance. The image is very heavy on the blue tones. I just did a quick color adjustment using two curves layers - one using the white eyedropped to get a decent (but not perfect, I admit) white point and the other using the gray eyedropper to alter the color balance of the mid-tones. I also applied a very slight luminosity curve to increase mid-tone contrast just a bit.</p>

<p><img src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/9246751-lg.jpg" alt="" /></p>

<p>Your lens sharpness is fine - a great example of why sharpness is not always about sharpness. The sharpness of the skin texture of the subjects face (assuming this is a 100% crop) is quite good. But notice that the DOF is so narrow that the right eye is not in perfect focus - and that is our focal point when viewing the image - and the left ey quickly recedes into blur.</p>

<p>The largest aperture and the narrowest DOF are not always the optimum choices for portraits.</p>

<p>Dan</p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<p>Danzel, if you could post one of your own pictures (or a portion of it) that you are not satisfied with, it might be easier to narrow down precisely what you are doing wrong--assuming that you really are doing something wrong.</p>

<p>Without that, it is impossible to know for sure if the problems involve what you are doing (1) when shooting or (2) after shooting, in the post-processing phase.</p>

<p>If the problem is in the shooting phase, you might post a section of a file that shows what you captured before you subjected it to post-processing of any kind. If there appears to be no problem with the file (or portion thereof) that you got out of the camera, then and only then could we say with absolute certainty what might be required to get the best out of that file in post-processing.</p>

<p>As has been said already, if you shoot with a tripod and the right exposure settings in good light, you really do not need exotic software tools or plug-ins to get an acceptably sharp finished product.<br>

<br /> --Lannie</p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<blockquote>

<p>You may want to set you camera to sharpen more. --Dennis Fox</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I would avoid that. I would much prefer to have a RAW file to work with, so that I could have total control over post-processing.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[Tim_Lookingbill]

<p>David Blakeman's studio shots off the first link in Josh's post were taken with a Canon 5D Mark II full frame DSLR stopping down an f/1.2 lens to f/4 and upping the ISO to 500. That's how he gets the extended DOF at 50mm on some of those studio shots on top of having adequate studio lighting.</p>

<p>I wonder on Jerry's 85mm lens shot posted above if stepping farther back from the subject and stopping down to around f/4 and upping the ISO would get the same DOF results as David's shots.</p>

 

[joshloeser]

<p>Fascinating analysis, Tim. Thank you for that. Did you happen to look through a few pages of David's work? I ask because his work is a bit varied, and some of his outdoor stuff is the most interesting to me (the studio stuff clearly uses flash/strobe lighting, and so that's less interesting by itself). </p>

<p>Some of his shots have extremely limited depth of field, but are very well lit.</p>

[g dan mitchell]

<blockquote>

<p>I wonder on Jerry's 85mm lens shot posted above if stepping farther back from the subject and stopping down to around f/4 and upping the ISO would get the same DOF results as David's shots.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Yup. That's why I wrote:</p>

<blockquote>

<p>The largest aperture and the narrowest DOF are not always the optimum choices for portraits.</p>

</blockquote>

[peter]

<p>Interestingly, one of the impediments to sharpening, it seems to me, is exposure. A wrongly exposed image needs more work in post processing to get it right and my observation is that these edits can negatively affect sharpness - especially if the image is under exposed and there is a lot of noise that has to be removed. Getting rid of noise always reduces sharpness to some extent even if its moderate incidentally - so BTW you should try to shoot at the lowest ISO value possible (where there is less noise) without introducing movement blur. (trade offs, trade offs, trade offs!) .<br>

So getting exposure just right is best other things being equal.</p>

<p>Often times getting the right contrast in a photo helps too. Micro contrast / local contrast / clarity / clarify filtration or whetever you call it, particularly helps apparent sharpness. I am glad that more image editors have some kind of clarity / clarify / local contrast filter.</p>

<p>Finally another non-obvious factor is saturation. A slightly over saturated image will, other things being equal help <strong>apparent </strong>image sharpness. (Which is after all, what sharpness is all about - being apparent.)</p>

<p>PS Incidentally, it is often recommended that you sharpen an image <strong>last</strong> for really critical sharpness - the reason I am told is that many other filters apparently degrade sharpness slightly (noise reduction filtration is merely a severe example of this) so its best to do the sharpening last (Although this then runs the risk of increasing the appearance of any residual image noise - What did I say about trade offs?)</p>

[jcoffin]

<p>Tim Lookingbill said:</p>

<blockquote>

<p>I wonder on Jerry's 85mm lens shot posted above if stepping farther back from the subject and stopping down to around f/4 and upping the ISO would get the same DOF results as David's shots.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>They undoubtedly would. If you look back through my posts in this thread, I've been saying since the beginning that the shots in the OP's link looked to me like they were shot around f/4. It's certainly nice to have that guess confirmed.</p>

<p>Likewise, there's no real question that at f/4 and the same distance, my lens would give roughly the same DoF as his -- it's basic to optics, not something that varies between lenses. I'm sure you're already aware of that, but assuming the original poster hasn't gotten bored and moved on, it's something worth keeping in mind.</p>

<p>Despite people frequently pushing the idea that you need really expensive glass to do X kind of photographs well, the reality is usually rather different. Admittedly there are a few subjects (e.g. birds) where particular types of lenses are really helpful, and those can tend to be fairly expensive. There are still a whole lot of types of photographs that don't require expensive, fast lenses though. For that matter, I've taken a fair number of shots of birds that I think are pretty fair with nothing longer than a 70-210mm...</p>

<p>[Hmmm...in case my wife ever sees this: by some strange chance, the pictures <strong>I</strong> take are mostly in those categories that <strong>do </strong> require expensive lenses! In fact, my current bird pictures are really all pretty lousy -- I honestly need that 70-400, I swear!]</p>

[Brad_]

I dunno... I just go out and shoot, looking for nice light and interesting subjects. And everything seems to work OK; using a Rebel dcam and 3rd party f/2.8 zoom that's not particularly super sharp. I never put much thought or analysis into it. It really is about the light and largish apertures...<P>

 

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<img src= "http://pages.sbcglobal.net/b-evans/Images43/EdwardYeye.jpg">

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[dried_squid]

I wonder if Danzel is expecting sharpness across the frame, ie. ignoring depth-of-field.

Or perhaps he expects depth-of-field is dependant only on aperature, and unaware of the relationship to distance.

 

I wonder if his camera has a Depth-of-Field preview.

[michaelyoung]

<p>This thread is a keeper! What great information and thank you all.<br>

I've been consumed with the optical (lens) aspect of "sharp" for so long. Only during my recent fiddling with PS over the past week or so am I beginning to understand the importance of contrast and saturation.<br>

I'll only add to "avoid" the global saturation commands and to work with individual, predominant colors; it doesn't take much to make a world of difference.<br>

If you have a PS version that supports it (do they all?) the sharpen tool in the toolbar with its "luminance" "lighten" "saturation," etc. components also, sometimes, takes care of edges very nicely without affecting the entire image--for instance, a must for water droplets on flora.</p>

[brian_ellis19]

<p>Some of these have probably already been mentioned, I haven't read the whole thread, but:<br>

Use a good sturdy tripod<br>

Use mirror lock-up if your camera has that feature. Wait about 5 seconds after locking the mirror to make the exposure. I use mirror lock-up on every shot, I don't try to figure out whether the shutter speed is in the "danger zone" or not. It's simple to lock up the mirror on my Canon 5D so I do it every time.<br>

If depth of field isn't a concern, use the aperture at which the lens is the sharpest. As a general rule, that's one to two stops from wide open. But if that won't produce the desired depth of field then use the aperture that will. It's more important to have the depth of field you need than to use the lens' theoretical optimum aperture. If even the smallest aperture won't produce the required depth of field then make sure the foreground is sharp. It's usually less disturbing if the background is a little soft than if the foreground is (assuming, of course, that you want everything from front to back to appear sharp, which isn't always the case).<br>

Use a cable release.<br>

Learn how to sharpen. Among other things, many images work better if you don't sharpen everything by the same amount. I sharpen areas of detail more than areas in which there is little detail or in which detail isn't important. Some areas - e.g. the sky - are never sharpened. It takes some time and effort to learn how to sharpen well. A good program such as PK Sharpen might help. I didn't care for that program myself but a lot of people find it useful. I don't use Smart Sharpen because I've been doing this for many years and I have a system that works for me and I'm not anxious to change. But if Patrick says it works better than the unsharpen filter then it's certainly worth a try.<br>

Don't judge sharpness by how the image looks on the monitor. The image will look sharper on paper than it will on your monitor.</p>

<p> </p>

[Tim_Lookingbill]

<p>Josh,</p>

<p>Been out looking for better zoom lenses under $200 since I can't afford an expensive ones for my $500 Pentax K100D. Finally got a nice Pentax AF 35-105 f/4-5.6 macro from KEH, but it doesn't work well with my 2X Quantaray teleconverter for sharpness. Produces tons of flair over what I get with an old heavy Vivitar 28-135 f/3.5 A MF macro that was given to me by my brother who had it rolling around in a junk drawer for years. The Quantaray cost me $6 at a thrift store.</p>

<p>I did look through David's blog and gallery of images and found them quite good with very interesting compositions. I like his outdoor shots because he allows happy accidents to occur with light, color temperature and contrast and doesn't try to polish them out in post. He definitely has a good eye for producing some unique looking images.</p>

<p>I can tell you a lot can be done in post in making a very bad lens give nice sharp results shooting Raw. Below is a before and after post processing test shot viewed at 100% in ACR off my Pentax K100D, Vivitar/Quantaray combo shot at full zoom, f/8, 1/200th, ISO 800. All I did was hit Auto in ACR and reduce Exposure from +1.35 to +1.00 and clean and sharpen using noise reduction and a bit of blue fringing correction. Didn't take but a couple of minutes. The camera was braced against the corner of my front porch brick wall.</p><div></div>

[rashedahmed]

<p>A few days back I posted ' Is 24-105 L really a sharp lens ?' Because I found my EF 24-85 more sharp to the' L' one. Prime lenses are always a good choice in geting sharp images. Image sharpning in PS or other software is different from real optical sharpness.</p>

 

[carlwakefield]

<p>Jerry regarding your example at 1.4 mm on an 85mm lens. If you check a working distance of 4 meters you will have a total focal distance of 11.7cm. If you look at your example you have the shoulder of the shirt on the front of the focal pane and the first eye on the back edge. If you move your focal distance forwards you would get both eyes and if you backed off a bit so you included the elbow of the boy and a touch over his head you would have all you needed in focus even with 1.4 I am sure. If you moved out futher you could increase the total focus range again and then crop in to take advantage of 1.4 for what ever reason you wanted to use it. If you look at the examples Matt commeted on the working distance is much greater than 4 meters.</p>

[kari v]

<p>Rashed, I think you should read the thread you're posting in. Lots of good info about perceived sharpness here.<br>

Also, all digital files *require* sharpening no matter what lens you have, it's the nature of sensor and filter technology used in most digital cameras.</p>

[roberto_gelleni1]

<p>Wow you guys, this thread is better than an entire shelf of photography books, that from a rookie prospective...<br>

thanks.</p>

[g dan mitchell]

<blockquote>

<p>PS Incidentally, it is often recommended that you sharpen an image <strong>last</strong> for really critical sharpness - the reason I am told is that many other filters apparently degrade sharpness slightly (noise reduction filtration is merely a severe example of this) so its best to do the sharpening last (Although this then runs the risk of increasing the appearance of any residual image noise - What did I say about trade offs?)</p>

</blockquote>

<p>That used to be the word on sharpening, but it isn't that simple any more. There are two ways to sharpen earlier than "last" that can make a lot of sense.</p>

<p>Depending upon the photograph, the sharpening (and noise reduction, and dust removal) features in ACR can be very powerful - and they are applied during RAW conversion. The noise/sharpening are especially useful in a photograph with a bit of excessive noise in dark areas of uniform luminosity/color. Here I would generally do the minimum amount of adjustment, with further (and different) sharpening in CS4. I would also bring the converted image into CS4 in 16-bit and as a smart layer - the latter allows me to return to ACR to make adjustments later. This is extremely powerful.</p>

<p>I apply my primary sharpening (described generally in an earlier post in this thread) to the background layer using smart filters. I use a smart sharpen filter and a USM filter. Although I rarely need to do this, the smart filters allow me to return to the sharpening settings later in the workflow and made further adjustments if necessary.</p>

<p>The only sharpening that I delay until the rest of the image processing is complete is the last state, also describe in my earlier post, where I sharpen specifically for the paper/printer I use in order to compensate for ink spread. This is done to a flattened version of the file as the final step before printing. (I do an alterntive sort of sharpening at this stage for jpgs.)</p>

<p>Dan</p>

[g dan mitchell]

<blockquote>

<p>I dunno... I just go out and shoot, looking for nice light and interesting subjects. And everything seems to work OK; using a Rebel dcam and 3rd party f/2.8 zoom that's not particularly super sharp. I never put much thought or analysis into it. It really is about the light and largish apertures...</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Sometimes, in certain types of photography and with certain compelling subjects (such as yours) this can work perfectly. In many other cases it is not so simple. Sorry.</p>

[ray .]

<p>Get a good lens. Very rarely do I do any kind of sharpening whatsoever when using something like Leica or Zeiss optics.</p>

[g dan mitchell]

<blockquote>

<p>Get a good lens. Very rarely do I do any kind of sharpening whatsoever when using something like Leica or Zeiss optics.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Good lenses are fine, but if you shoot RAW it doesn't matter how good your lens is - you still need to sharpen in order to get the best your lens is capable of.</p>

[eco_foto]

<p>Razor sharp & portraits do not really go well together,I don't want to see every blemish on a persons face,IMHO</p>

[Brad_]

>>> Sometimes, in certain types of photography and with certain compelling subjects (such as yours) this can work perfectly. In many

other cases it is not so simple. Sorry.<P>

 

 

It is simple. Really. Compelling subjects are not a requirement. The above could have been of two bums and it still

would have looked nice. For almost every subject whether it's a street shot, puppy dogs, landscapes, sports, nightclubs, cars, buildings,

etc, great looking photographs come from shooting in nice light. <P>

 

And it's certainly not about the "best" camera bodies or lenses. I use a beginner's dSLR and 3rd party consumer lens that's hardly the sharpest. In

fact wide open, where I shoot most of the time, it isn't very sharp. Yes, some disciplines require more specialized equipment; sports is

a good example (needing great AF, fast and long lenses, high FPS)...<P>

 

From photographs I see posted, the biggest issues by far come from not exploiting nice/great light. Shooting in flat light yields flat photos with

no life. The only thing worse that that is shooting in harsh mid-day light; you might as well not even trip the shutter. No amount of post-processing can resurrect either and make a good photo. <P>

 

A snap from last week's Bay to Breakers in SF:<P>

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<img src= "http://pages.sbcglobal.net/b-evans/Images45/Ivy.jpg">

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[ray .]

<p>If I'm not mistaken the question was about how to make pics razor sharp, not whether or not you think it's an important issue. Yes, light and contrast has a lot to do with the appearance of sharpness, but images shot in good light can still be lacking sharpness of the razor variety.</p>

<p>That's a decent pic, shall we expect to see it 14 more times as one of your examples?</p>

[Brad_]

>>> If I'm not mistaken the question was about how to make pics razor sharp, not whether or not you think it's an

important issue.

<P>

 

As I and many others here have pointed out, the *perception* of sharpness comes from a variety of

factors; many not having anything to do with lens sharpness at all. Read the thread, including looking at the portrait

photos linked by the OP.

<P>

 

>>> That's a decent pic, shall we expect to see it 14 more times as one of your examples?<P>

 

I post photos to go along with issues under discussion as examples; as others do similarly.

 

<P>

 

From Sunday, SF Carnaval:

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<img src= "http://pages.sbcglobal.net/b-evans/Images46/MudWoman.jpg">

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