Soft Len on my 40D ?

bazzer

bazzer

Messages
511
Name
Barry
Edit My Images
Yes
After 7 Yrs of faithful service from my trusty Casio QV3000 P&S, I decided it was time to upgrade to a DSLR camera & last week I bought a 40D, wow what an amazing camera !
I decided to go for the Canon 18-55 IS lens after reading Photozone review but after downloading the first few pics
was disappionted on how soft the photos were. Am I being too fussy ? I'm attempting to link some photos, but don't be too suprised if it fails as I've never done it before. All shots were jpg's straight from the camera, the only processing was to reduce them for TP
I do appreciate that they can be improved by PP & have done so, but I just want to get the best original image ( can't afford L lens )
Is the lens soft ? I would appreciate any guidence :bonk:


IMG_0084.jpg
IMG_0085.jpg
IMG_00631.jpg
IMG_00551.jpg
IMG_0033_2.jpg
 
I think they are great shots. I am far from experience but could you be asking a lot from that lens in those situations?

Those are demanding scenes that perhaps require slightly better lenses to compete with some of the shots you see in this forum. I'd be happy with them I can tell you. You could also try raw and see if you can capture more detail than the Jpeg's offer.
 
I've got a 17-85 lens and found that going down a couple of stops increased the sharpness of the pics straight from the camera...or maybe it was a good day when I experimented :shrug:
 
pearce jj said:
what f-stop are you using?
Click to expand...
#1 - f16
#2 - f16
#3 - f16
#4 - f11
#5 - f7

These don't look too soft to me. If you want to make if sharper, you can always change the picture style settings - one of which being the sharpness - by going to picture styles in the menu, choosing a picture style, and then altering how sharp every picture taken with that picture style is.
 
A most enjoyable set of images which bring back memories of the island from when I lived there.

Are a couple of the images from Chale beach towards Freshwater?
 
might be worth showing some 100% crops from the images as it's difficult to tell from web-size stuff. Click on the magnify options, then show actual pixels and crop out an 800px x 800px section and show us!

I strongly suspect that the sharpening is turned down on the camera. It doesn't look like motion blur from too slow a shutter a speed or poor technique to me.

You will have to sharpen images when you re-size them for the web too.

A consumer quality lens is never going to be as bitingly sharp as a pro one but it shouldn't be awful unles it's VERY cheap lol.

I had a little play and sharpened it up in cs3....

IMG_005511.jpg


looks ok to me now.

Have a play with the camera settings and see if you can get some more satisfactory results!
 
Thanks to everyone for the replies. Thanks for the f-stop data Matthew & good idea with the sharpness in the Picture Styles - will have to experiment with that.
If thats not successful I will have to try a 100% crop as Ghandi suggested. BTW Ghandi - will have to send all my shots for your PP !
halesowenkid, you are correct, the pics are as follows 1 - Whale Chine looking towards Tennyson Down 2 - Whale Chine looking towards Chale / St Catherines Down 3 & 4 - Freshwater Bay 5 - Colwell Bay (y)
 
If you're shooting jpegs, then as has been said you can probably increase the in -camera sharpening.

No two pictures are the same though, and many many photographers would advocate disabling sharpening altogether in the camera, and dealing with each image individually in processing.

I don't think you should expect an optimally sharpened digital image straight out of the camera anyway - just one which is capable of being optimally sharpened.
 
Try shooting RAW instead of JPEG and use the Canon DPP software to tweak sharpening, contrast, colour saturation and white balance. Also, check the canon website for updates to DPP as the newer version has highlight/shadow warnings.

I have a 40D as well and find the RAW files pretty soft in camera but a wee bit of tweaking with DPP really brings the detail (and sharpness) through.

Good luck
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top