Beginner Why are my images soft?

Mintchocs said:
What settings did you use for sharpening in Affinity? Is it possible you forgot to sharpen before exporting?
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I really don't think this is a sharpening issue. The image is very clearly slightly out of focus.

It looks to me like either bad technique, a bad lens or a simple case of focus calibration required. Even the images that have been edited in this post while may have a bit more vibrance and contrast are still soft.
 
If you are capturing your images in RAW, I was told years ago that they need a bit of processing to bring out the best - personally I add 20 Vibrance and 20 Clarity in Lightroom to most images.

If however you are capturing in JPEG, check the image setting on this body versus your other camera body. Sorry, I don't know the terminology for Nikon, but for Canon, it is called the Picture Style, here is a little snippet from the manual:

1700744066605.png

Note that if capturing in RAW the camera claims to have those same Picture Style controls, but my understanding is that these are only for the embedded JPEG displayed on the back screen.
 
Hawthorn said:
Thankyou. I have got similar results by editing but nothing in the image appears sharp. Surely something must be in focus as it won't take the image until it finds something.
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There’s a difference between ‘in focus’ and sharp. Many things can make something unsharp
 
Plain Nev said:
No, it's not. While it will resolve detail in the right environments, there is notable noise in the shadow detail of the tree line, for instance. I shoot a 10MP Canon, and that has been my experience.
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In focus noise though probably.

And we weren't discussing noise
 
Plain Nev said:
You've also got to factor in the MP's. I think yours is only 12MP, isn't it? It probably won't look great blown up.
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I don't want to take this thread too far off-topic, but. . .

When the D700 came out, 12mp was a lot. most were 3 or 6mp. Apparent sharpness is all about viewing distance, so even massive enlargements are OK at reasonable viewing distances. I still have and use one, and also have the D3, which is basically the same camera but with a few extra features that put it in the "Pro" camp. I also had a medium format 6mp camera, which produced even better results.

An anecdote. A few years ago one of my images was used on our display stand at Focus on Imaging, as it then was. We'd hired a graphic designer who thought that she knew all about photography but who knew nothing, she took my image and printed a small part of it at 4m high. Just guessing, but I think that if she had used the full frame the image would have been at least 9m x 6m. And, to make matters even worse, she had it printed on gloss paper.

But, to my amazement, it looked (almost) pin-sharp, even when viewed at a distance of less than a metre, which is a a typical viewing distance at an exhibition.

So, why did it work?
Shot in raw, correctly exposed and correctly focussed. No camera shake, ISO 200, decent lens.

Improve your technique
Focus with care. When the subject allows you to (such as a landscape) check the image for both correct focus and camera shake by enlarging it on the viewing screen after taking the shot. Make absolutely sure that you don't underexpose. Use a good tripod when you need one.

Check the lens quality
It may or may not be OK, as suggested by others, compare it to other lenses that are available to you. It may or may not focus as expected.

Post Processing
Is an important part of photography today, and we simply can't manage without it. Free versions are available but personally I think that a subscription to Photoshop is well worth the cost. Use PP to improve good images, don't take the lazy approach of trying to rescue bad ones, it can never work. Don't shoot in raw unless you have the right software, and don't expect the learning process to be a quick one.
 
Garry Edwards said:
I don't want to take this thread too far off-topic, but. . .

When the D700 came out, 12mp was a lot. most were 3 or 6mp. Apparent sharpness is all about viewing distance, so even massive enlargements are OK at reasonable viewing distances. I still have and use one, and also have the D3, which is basically the same camera but with a few extra features that put it in the "Pro" camp. I also had a medium format 6mp camera, which produced even better results.

An anecdote. A few years ago one of my images was used on our display stand at Focus on Imaging, as it then was. We'd hired a graphic designer who thought that she knew all about photography but who knew nothing, she took my image and printed a small part of it at 4m high. Just guessing, but I think that if she had used the full frame the image would have been at least 9m x 6m. And, to make matters even worse, she had it printed on gloss paper.

But, to my amazement, it looked (almost) pin-sharp, even when viewed at a distance of less than a metre, which is a a typical viewing distance at an exhibition.

So, why did it work?
Shot in raw, correctly exposed and correctly focussed. No camera shake, ISO 200, decent lens.

Improve your technique
Focus with care. When the subject allows you to (such as a landscape) check the image for both correct focus and camera shake by enlarging it on the viewing screen after taking the shot. Make absolutely sure that you don't underexpose. Use a good tripod when you need one.

Check the lens quality
It may or may not be OK, as suggested by others, compare it to other lenses that are available to you. It may or may not focus as expected.

Post Processing
Is an important part of photography today, and we simply can't manage without it. Free versions are available but personally I think that a subscription to Photoshop is well worth the cost. Use PP to improve good images, don't take the lazy approach of trying to rescue bad ones, it can never work. Don't shoot in raw unless you have the right software, and don't expect the learning process to be a quick one.
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Thankyou. Lots to think about there. I spent a while experimenting yesterday with both my camera body's and my 3 lenses. I have more experiments planned for the weekend. I hear that a D700 with a 50mm 1.8 lens should give sharp images so I'm going to work with that combination for a while to improve my technique.
 
Hawthorn said:
Interesting. I hadn't appreciated there was a difference. I will read up. Thankyou.
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This shot of mine is in focus, but it's nowhere near sharp because of the heat haze coming up off the track surface. Loads of things can lead to reduced image sharpness that are nothing to do with the shot being in focus or not.

British GT Championship 2023 by Richard Crawford, on Flickr
 
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Hawthorn said:
Interesting. I hadn't appreciated there was a difference. I will read up. Thankyou.
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OTTOMH
camera movement
Subject movement
Heat haze
UV haze
Moisture haze
Lens Flare
Softer light creates softer images than harder light.
Not a comprehensive list.

And importantly all of the above are ‘features’ of an environment or situation that we may want to capture rather than eliminate.

Which brings us to the conclusion that the only ‘bad’ picture is one that doesn’t achieve the aims of the photographer.

And why we sometimes appear pedantic when someone posts an image and asks ‘what went wrong’ and the first response is ‘what were you aiming to achieve?’
 
Phil V said:
OTTOMH
camera movement
Subject movement
Heat haze
UV haze
Moisture haze
Lens Flare
Softer light creates softer images than harder light.
Not a comprehensive list.

And importantly all of the above are ‘features’ of an environment or situation that we may want to capture rather than eliminate.

Which brings us to the conclusion that the only ‘bad’ picture is one that doesn’t achieve the aims of the photographer.

And why we sometimes appear pedantic when someone posts an image and asks ‘what went wrong’ and the first response is ‘what were you aiming to achieve?’
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Excellent information. Thank you.
 
Hawthorn said:
Excellent information. Thank you.
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And back to your image?
IMHO what went wrong first is that I don’t know what it’s a picture of!

Sorry if that sounds harsh, but you might have stood in nature and thought what you were looking at was beautiful, however the composition you’ve chosen doesn’t reflect that.

There’s no obvious ‘subject’, no use of any compositional tools to create a compelling image. You appear to have just lifted your camera and made a half arsed attempt to focus on the ‘landscape’. Which is probably why nothing looks sharp, it looks snatched rather than considered.
 
He has a point.
 
Phil V said:
And back to your image?
IMHO what went wrong first is that I don’t know what it’s a picture of!

Sorry if that sounds harsh, but you might have stood in nature and thought what you were looking at was beautiful, however the composition you’ve chosen doesn’t reflect that.

There’s no obvious ‘subject’, no use of any compositional tools to create a compelling image. You appear to have just lifted your camera and made a half arsed attempt to focus on the ‘landscape’. Which is probably why nothing looks sharp, it looks snatched rather than considered.
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It wasn't meant to look nice. I was experimenting with trying to get things in focus. Foreground, midground and in the distance.
 
Hawthorn said:
It wasn't meant to look nice. I was experimenting with trying to get things in focus. Foreground, midground and in the distance.
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That’s not how ‘focus’ works, or consequently how photography works.

It’s not your fault; many photographers talk about Depth of Field as if it is ‘range of focus’; and it isn’t.

Focus is a plane
It is only a plane (a fixed distance from the sensor).
DoF (and there are many more complex descriptions) is a zone of acceptable sharpness, that’s roughly 1/3 in front of the subject and 2/3 behind.
and that’s key, every picture needs a subject; you can’t practice just by randomly pointing your camera at ‘nothing’ because a picture of nothing won’t teach you how to shoot a picture of something. Because a picture of nothing doesn’t have a subject to focus on, consequently it’s impossible to ascertain whether the subject is in focus, or sharp.

Hope that helps.
 
Hawthorn said:
It wasn't meant to look nice. I was experimenting with trying to get things in focus. Foreground, midground and in the distance.
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Out of interest, in your picture, where did you actually focus the camera?
 
Phil V called it. It's a general rule of thumb that you focus on a point that's about a third of the way in. The reasoning being that if you have a small enough aperture you should have sufficient focus before and after.
 
Phil V said:
And back to your image?
IMHO what went wrong first is that I don’t know what it’s a picture of!

Sorry if that sounds harsh, but you might have stood in nature and thought what you were looking at was beautiful, however the composition you’ve chosen doesn’t reflect that.

There’s no obvious ‘subject’, no use of any compositional tools to create a compelling image. You appear to have just lifted your camera and made a half arsed attempt to focus on the ‘landscape’. Which is probably why nothing looks sharp, it looks snatched rather than considered.
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Phil is right. Like me, he isn't always tactful, but tact doesn't always work . . .

Photography is an odd mixture of pseudo-science and art. It isn't real science, but there are scientific elements that we need to understand because, without at least a basic understanding, any good results are down to nothing more than luck and cannot be replicated.

The science is really just basic physics and depth of field is an example of this. If you google depth of field calculator you'll get something like this https://www.photopills.com/calculators/dof

You'll see that there are a range of variables that you need to input. The first one, on this calculator, is the camera. Actually, the camera doesn't matter, but what does matter is the negative or sensor size, and they've made it as simple as possible by grouping hopefully all cameras with the same sensor size together.

By playing with the variables, you'll see exactly how much depth of field (not to be confused with depth of focus, which is something very different) you'll get at different distances, distance focal length lenses, different lens apertures. You'll see, for example, that if you had taken that shot at f/16 instead of at f/10, the dof would have been much greater - although that isn't always a good thing.

They also provide all the figures, but as Phil pointed out, these are the figures that most people consider to fall within the range of acceptable sharpness, and only the true focus point is ever actually sharp. And, acceptable sharpness assumes that the entire frame has been enlarged, which means that people can't view it from an unusually short distance. When an image is "cropped" on computer then the image will be viewed from a closer distance, making the figures wrong.

So, familiarise yourself with the basic principles - depth of field and the inverse square law - to make your learning process much easier and to avoid wasting time trying shots that cannot possibly work for you. Back in the day, we all did this because the high cost of film meant that we couldn't afford to take too many shots without a good reason, but today a lot of people expect the camera to work everything out for them, and also are happy to waste hundreds or thousands of frames because there is no cost of materials. There's no reason why you shouldn't just take loads of shots in the hope that it might work, but you might want to think about Einstein's definition of insanity:)
 
Plain Nev said:
Phil V called it. It's a general rule of thumb that you focus on a point that's about a third of the way in. The reasoning being that if you have a small enough aperture you should have sufficient focus before and after.
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That’s not quite what I said:
In fact at worst it’s where I pointed out the OP may have been misled. (Sorry)

Whilst I understand the principle of hyperfocal distance, I could never bring myself to not focus on a ‘subject’, I find the notion bonkers.
 
Phil V said:
That’s not quite what I said:
In fact at worst it’s where I pointed out the OP may have been misled. (Sorry)

Whilst I understand the principle of hyperfocal distance, I could never bring myself to not focus on a ‘subject’, I find the notion bonkers.
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It sort of works and it sort of works well enough that a whole picture can look ok and even look ok when zooming in to 100% and looking around the picture, from front to back, things may look ok. I do this quite often.

As I've often advised, we should start at the end result we want and work back to determine both the kit needed and the settings used. For me using a "FF" camera and mostly lenses in the 28-50mm range and mostly viewing pictures as whole pictures or slight crops (after lens profiles/corrections or for aesthetic reasons) on a screen or occasionally as A4 prints with rare A3 prints hyperfocal techniques seem to work quite well and perhaps with some focal lengths and apertures and compositions you're going to get pretty much front to back acceptable sharpness even if you deliberately focus on something depending upon what distance things are from you, what aperture and focal length you are using and how big things are in the frame.

There may be a number of reasons why someone might do this. Acceptable sharpness all over could be a a reason, speed could be another. For example I often use manual lenses and if set to a suitable aperture and distance using a prefocus technique can be a quick and effective thing to do.

But I do know how you feel. Some things just feel wrong. With you it's hyperfocal and I have things which just seem wrong to me, silky water shots for example. I just can't bring myself to do it.
 
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woof woof said:
... silky water shots for example. I just can't bring myself to do it.
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I concur. It works but rarely, and only in the hands of certain seasoned individuals. For the run of the mill practitioner, it's a cliché technique that they've read about, try to emulate and hopefully will grow out of. There's no way that real life can be represented by a 'painting by numbers' approach (if anybody understands that reference).
 
woof woof said:
It sort of works and it sort of works well enough that a whole picture can look ok and even look ok when zooming in to 100% and looking around the picture, from front to back, things may look ok. I do this quite often.

As I've often advised, we should start at the end result we want and work back to determine both the kit needed and the settings used. For me using a "FF" camera and mostly lenses in the 28-50mm range and mostly viewing pictures as whole pictures or slight crops (after lens profiles/corrections or for aesthetic reasons) on a screen or occasionally as A4 prints with rare A3 prints hyperfocal techniques seem to work quite well and perhaps with some focal lengths and apertures and compositions you're going to get pretty much front to back acceptable sharpness even if you deliberately focus on something depending upon what distance things are from you, what aperture and focal length you are using and how big things are in the frame.

There may be a number of reasons why someone might do this. Acceptable sharpness all over could be a a reason, speed could be another. For example I often use manual lenses and if set to a suitable aperture and distance using a prefocus technique can be a quick and effective thing to do.

But I do know how you feel. Some things just feel wrong. With you it's hyperfocal and I have things which just seem wrong to me, silky water shots for example. I just can't bring myself to do it.
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Thanks @woof woof but again a slight misunderstanding

I don’t object to the principle of close to front to back focussing, many great landscape photos are made using this technique.

My problem with the discussion of it is that it can lead newbies into believing it doesn’t matter where they focus as long as DoF is wide because ‘everything will be in focus’ which is both technically incorrect, and can lead to the misunderstanding shown here by the OP.

BTW silky water is a bit of a bete noir of mine.
 
Phil V said:
Thanks @woof woof but again a slight misunderstanding

I don’t object to the principle of close to front to back focussing, many great landscape photos are made using this technique.

My problem with the discussion of it is that it can lead newbies into believing it doesn’t matter where they focus as long as DoF is wide because ‘everything will be in focus’ which is both technically incorrect, and can lead to the misunderstanding shown here by the OP.

BTW silky water is a bit of a bete noir of mine.
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OK. I see your point.

Hyperfocal and other techniques do need thinking about.
 
Phil V said:
Thanks @woof woof but again a slight misunderstanding

I don’t object to the principle of close to front to back focussing, many great landscape photos are made using this technique.

My problem with the discussion of it is that it can lead newbies into believing it doesn’t matter where they focus as long as DoF is wide because ‘everything will be in focus’ which is both technically incorrect, and can lead to the misunderstanding shown here by the OP.

BTW silky water is a bit of a bete noir of mine.
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Absolutely
There is only ever one plane of focus that is critically in focus, what ever the aperture and depth of field.
This has become even more apparent since digital photography allowed us to pixel peep and clearly see the focus fall off.
At small apertures diffraction comes into play and images quickly become diffraction limited.. at that point it becomes difficult to differentiate between the focus plane and less sharp areas.

The only reasonable exception to this rule is when a number of differentially focussed images are fused together.

However many other factors come into play such as Subject and camera movement between shots and exposure differences. These can add a can of worms to a novice photographer rather than be a help.

I totally agree that the focus should always be on the most important subject of an image, a choice simply has to be made, even in landscape photography. Depth of field only widens the area of Acceptable focus around that plane of focus.
It does not increase the area of Critical focus. Nor does it increase the sharpness beyond the capability of the lens.
 
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