Pixiq

Great article, thanks. Definitely all things to keep in the back of the mind when shooting — I’d say it’s pretty rare to say “damn, that photo was too sharp”.

The only point that might have a caveat is the “stop down your lens” tip. While technically true that lenses are sharpest when stopped down, often images will *appear* sharper when the aperture is wide open enough to throw the background nicely out of focus. The large “sharpness contrast” makes the subject seem sharper than it perhaps is. It’s a psychological/visual thing, rather than a technical thing. This is probably more effective on a naturally sharp lens like a good 50mm prime lens than a softer zoom.

Anyway, just thought that was worth thinking about. Great blog!

You will have to take your screen into account too!
I have too computers, a tower with a CRT monitor, and a laptop (LCD). The CRT displays pictures in a smoother way than the LCD. Sometimes, if I sharpen a picture on my CRT, the result will look bad (too sharp) on the LCD.

I have to disagree with point #6. With digital, it’s much better to overexpose by a stop or two than to underexpose. The argument of losing data applies to both ends of the spectrum. If there’s not enough light in an area because it’s underexposed, it’ll be black no matter what.

However, because of the way light works, there is an advantage to exposing more of your image in the lighter tones. For each stop, your camera can record twice as much information as the stop below it. That means that as long as you’re not all the way to the right of the histogram, you’ll have more levels of light, and thus more detail, in the lighter tones, and less noise. A more detailed explanation is at http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/expose-right.shtml.

When I started using a tripod, and the camera’s self timer, it made all the difference in the world.
Don’t forget, it’s the Photographer, not the Camera.

Lots of good advice here, some times I find the most difficult aspect can be getting a razor sharp image when you really want one!

A sturdy tripod is essential for me..

I remember the first time I used a remote. I have really shaky hands (lots o’ coffee!) and it was like someone had just given me gold.

Good list. Some of these I’ve not even thought of in a while. I don’t like using a tri-pod, thus giving the other tips more importance. Still have to love “Smart Sharpen” in photoshop.

Rosh

http://www.newmediaphotographer.com

Nice article.

I would add the following:
- Have a good quality lens. Great cameras can produce mush with a poor lens.

truly amazing. i am a complete beginner who is starting out with a 2nd hand EOS 20D just tried raw iso 100 f8 compared to raw iso400 f4.5 massively noticable difference.

i can see me visiting this site more in the future!

In regards to stopping down, the higher you go the more sharpness you will LOSE. Pinhole cameras especially. This is due to diffraction. This is not really relevant for most DSLR sensors up to f/16 or point and shoot sensors up to about f/8. Stopping down past those points results in a noticeable loss of sharpness due to diffraction.

Two additional tips I’d like to add:

1) Focus. If your photos aren’t in focus, they aren’t going to be sharp. If you can, frame you shot before you focus and don’t move the camera after you’re focused. Obviously this won’t work for everybody or everything. If you have to focus and then frame your shot be sure to move the camera as little towards or away from the camera as possible.

2) Lighting. If you light with a softbox from near the camera, you’re not going to introduce very much contrast into the scene. If you light with a bare reflector from 90°, though, you’re going to have a very contrasty shot and the perceived sharpness will increase.

Great article BTW!

Any news guys?

This may be a dumb question, but don’t you usually wind up compressing photos to JPGs on your computer even if you shoot in RAW? So won’t you wind up with noise from compression no matter what?

I guess I’m asking, is there an advantage to making the JPG on your computer vs. letting the camera compress to JPG, aside from the white balance, etc, modifications RAW lets you make after the fact?

I believe smart sharpen only sharpens areas of the photo that are somewhat sharp to begin with. So it won’t try to sharpen the entire image, even blurred backgrounds caused by a shallow DOF. Whereas USM sharpens everything, which can lead to noise, when you sharpen something that is OOF already (blurred background etc).

Personally, my less than sharp photos are always caused by me using too wide of an aperture, in an effort to get that really shallow DOF. I tend to make it too shallow some times. ; )

Good article with some interesting info – added you to my feeds and blogroll..

Great website.

at the risk of duplicating info..

above someone asked if RAW compresses into jpg.. yes it does UNLESS your camera offers the option of saving the picture in RAW file format. Why doesn’t everyone do this? I’m guessing the top reasons are

1) space. a RAW file can take up multiples of the space a jpg file can. If you have little memory, you might be concerned. I use a Canon xsi which at its best offers RAW+.. this saves a RAW file AND a large uncompressed jpg fiile for each shot – about a 15+ meg per shot usage. My solution? Buy a larger SD card! (or whatever memory type you use) My 16 gig card ($35) can save 700+ shots at this highest resolution!

2. Some graphics programs or photo retouch software can’t handle RAW format. This is getting to be less and less of a problem.

So – unless you KNOW you’ll never ever need the higher res, better color, etc of RAW – use RAW (or RAW +) every time.

great guide my friend! that’s a very informative article!thanks….ill keep all these in mind.

I really appreciated this article, I found it to be very helpful, thank you.

thanks for the info. I’ve been wondering how to make my photos look sharp. i am new to photography, in fact i’ve been exploring my new SLR for just 2 weeks
and not yet satisfied with my shots. this is really helpful for a beginner like me.:)

Nice article, some good tips. But this guy is TOTALY wrong when says to underexpose. He doesn’t understand how the image is electronically saved. The lower exposure is, the lower the quality. The correct answer is to shoot at HIGHEST exposure possible, and if it is important, to save some highlights. Remember that shooting in RAW gives you about +1 stop flexibility. So, if you want to avoid highlights, expose them in the maximum exposed area (+2 or even +3); then subexpose the picture in post processing. Even if you have a night scene, or a dark subject, make the exposure as high as possible. You will thank me for such greater tones… Of course, is easier to do all these things on MANUAL mode (Aperture priority is an AUTOMATIC mode) and spot metering, but we don’t speak for idiots, do we? They don’t read photography tips…

nice sharing… keep up the good job..

it helps me a lot

thanks

Good advice on the workflow. Sharpening should be done only directly before output when final size is known, a lot of people forget that.
Also, in print you can get away with much more sharpening than on screen.