Geese - New camera, new lens - still not a tack sharp focus

Hello,
When I first looked at these I was very happy. Then I looked here on the forum at other photos and realized that I am still far away from the "tack sharp" focus that I want. Please help me reach my goal.

Camera: Canon EOS REBEL T1i
Exposure: 0.004 sec (1/250)
Aperture: f/11.0
Focal Length: 250 mm
ISO Speed: 200
Exposure Bias: 0 EV​

Camera: Canon EOS REBEL T1i
Exposure: 0.001 sec (1/2000)
Aperture: f/5.0
Focal Length: 170 mm
ISO Speed: 200
Exposure Bias: 0 EV​

Wayne Stratton said:

Hello,
When I first looked at these I was very happy. Then I looked here on the forum at other photos and realized that I am still far away from the "tack sharp" focus that I want. Please help me reach my goal.

Click to expand...

Hi Wayne,

Thanks for sharing these images, even when you are not completely satified, it can only help to diagnose the issue.

The first image is, despite the smallish aperture, sharp although perhaps a tad front-focused if you aimed at the swan at the rear. Given the 4.7 micron sensel pitch of the T1i/500D, apertures that are narrower than approx. f/5.6 will gradually begin to suffer from diffraction effects. The dense sensel packing is also very taxing on the optical qualities of your lens. So for the best per pixel sharpness, it is best to restrict yourself to f/5.6 unless you anticipate downsampling (which will reduce the visible diffraction effects). Your second shot is outside the 'dangerzone', but the first will be impacted at the pixel level (100% zoom).

Opening up the aperture will result in dimished Depth of Field (DOF) so accurate focus becomes even more important. You can check how well your camera and lens are calibrated to give good focus by using Live View. Let the camera do an AF on a subject (preferably a flat surface with enough contrasty detail to focus on) at some distance. Then switch to Live View, and check if you can manually improve the focus. If you do, then the AF is not optimal. When the direction of the AF bias is consistently front- or back-focus, then a calibration may help. Also make sure that you use a single focus sensor to make sure you only focus on what you want, not what the camera thinks is the highest contrast/sharpest feature.

Then in postprocessing you can (within reason) compensate for focus errors, or accentuate certain spatial frequencies in the imge that help the impression of focus. When you use a free application like RawTherapee, you have the option of sharpness restoration with a special method (Richardson-Lucy restoration) that was used to 'repair' the images from the Hubble telescope. But first try to nail the focus and aperture issues, before trying to restore what shouldn't get lost if at all possible.

Cheers,
Bart

I think these are pretty good images Wayne. It looks to me like your depth of field is a little too narrow to get all of your subject in sharp focus. Maybe next time out try a smaller aperture and higher shutter speed. I won't tell you how times I've come away from the old duck pond without any keepers. I just keep going back to practice even more. 8~D

Hi, Bart,

Although I don't "have a dog in this fight", as always I find your well-stated insights into the practical impact of these phenomena very beneficial. They will help me in my own ongoing work.

Best regards,

Doug

Hi Wayne, I like these photos. There are many nature photographers here with specific know how regarding sharpness in this kind of photos. You´ve got already great specific advice in the previous posts. I just wanted to point out the importance of comparing apples to apples. I don´t see any important problem in these photos in terms of shrapness (wich is a very relative quality anyway), but you can´t compare them with photos taken with top of the line gear, let alone the experience of the photographer. Of course, the point of your question is precisely how to improve your technique, my point is just to be realistic in what you can achieve with your equipment, it works the same for every photographer.

Some good comments above.

Yes, getting both geese in focus is almost impossible, given that they are not close enough to being in the same plane of focus. That's just physics.

I know your questions were about sharpness, which were addressed in some of the other replies, but I would also like to suggest being aware of the post processing of tonality as well. If you look at both images, the brights are bright, the darks are dark, and the midtones thereby suffer. Basically too much contrast. Play with Shadows/Highlights, and just good old Levels, in Photoshop, and get a feel for how your modifications effect the image, and provide more options in achieving something that looks good to you.