Hi folks
Please be gentle, but constructive! Long time "snapper" trying to get more serious about my photography, to which end I've recently purchased an X-S10 with 18-55 (my 'main' camera before this had been a Canon 100D (now sold) and briefly, a Canon 77D (also now gone) and I've also got a Panasonic FZ330 bridge.
Although I've been taking photos for years, my new found passion has got me scrutinising photos I take much more, especially as I can see I see from some of the stunning shots posted in this forum what can be achieved. One of the areas I'm having the most trouble with is sharpness/focus accuracy. As an example, please see the image below (forget anything about composition or angle, I just wanted a picture of my cat taken with the above gear at 1/160th f6.4
I 'think' that I have her face in focus, but you can see from the rest of the photo that the depth of field is not that wide (I'd intended the whole body to be in sharp focus). This is straight OOC.
I don't know if this is because:
- I've got the wrong/poor settings (quite possibly). I know a stopping down (or is it up) to a higher f number would have increased DOF but then I might have struggled with light. ISO was auto set at 800
- Poor technique camera shake etc - although perhaps less so because at least part of the photo seems fairly crisp and the camera has IBIS and the lens has OIS switched on (not that either of those would stop a particularly bad holding technique)
- Potential issues with the sharpness of the lens (given that there are multitudes of posts about varying sharpness of lenses even from the same make/model (I understand that the XF 18-55 2.8-4 is broadly accepted as a better than average kit lens, though not as good as a prime, so I'm slightly paranoid about whether this is a "soft" example.
Thank you for any advice and/or guidance in advance.
Simon
DSCF0451 by
Simon P Hiscocks, on Flickr