Tips & Tricks: How to take Sharp Photographs

Taking sharp photographs is the dream of every photographer. However taking crisp, clean images can be quite challenging.  I would like to share with you guys some tips on how to get razor sharp photographs, but before that let’s see what are the common causes for lack of sharpness:

Wrong focusing. The most common cause for blurry photos is not focusing right. Often happens to focus on the wrong part of the image, or using a very narrow depth of field, or taking the photo quick without checking if it is in focus, and all of this helps in throwing your subject out of focus and obtaining blurry photographs.

Low value of the shutter speed. This causes 2 sets pf problems: Camera shake and Subject movement. This two makes blurry photos because your shutter speed is too low to freeze the action.

Noise. Sometimes using high ISO values might get you results with lack of sharpness. Although since cameras evolve so quickly these days, higher ISO values might still get you very sharp images.

Here are 9 ways of improving your photographs sharpness:

1. Hold your camera still or be careful of your shutter speed.

A lot of blur in the photos is cause by camera movement and/or subject movement combined with low shutter speeds. So one solution it’s to use higher shutter speeds. The rule of thumbs is to use a shutter speed value higher then the focal length used, so if you use a 50mm focal length you shouldn’t use a shutter speed lower than 1/60 (the value on your camera is 60), or when using a focal length of 300mm you shouldn’t use a shutter speed lower than 1/320 (the value on your camera is 320). But there are times when you can’t use this high values due to poor light and in this case try holding your camera still, by using both hands, keeping the camera close to your body, supporting yourself with a wall, tree or some other solid object or the most important thing is using a tripod, but be careful that holding you camera still won’t  freeze a high speed moving subject.

2. Know how to use the aperture and depth of field.

The aperture size controls your depth of field (the distance where your subject is in focus). The size of the depth of field (DOF) is controlled by the aperture size, focal length and distance from the camera to the subject. The reason you should be careful of the depth of field size, is that you can have the size of the DOF of a few centimeters and a slight movement of your camera or subject might through your subject out of focus. So using a large aperture size of let’s say f/2.8 give you a small DOF but a small aperture size of let’s say f/20 give you a huge DOF.

3. ISO.

For getting pin sharp images use as low as possible ISO settings. Using high ISO values fills up you details with noise giving your image low sharpness. You can get away with ISO values of less then 400 or the value might be higher depending of your camera.

4. Focus right.

More than often the cause of the blurriness in the photographs is the fact that your subject is out of focus. There are times where you camera doesn’t focus right so the unique solution is to check your image is in focus after taking the shot. There isn’t a way of improving the automatic camera focus. But, you can focus manually and this is very helpful for macro photography since there is a very small depth of field, and getting your subject in focus it’s very challenging for you and almost impossible for the camera to do it right.

5. Image Stabilisation.

Nowadays a lot of lenses and cameras have different forms of Image Stabilisation. This counteracts the camera shake but be careful that it won’t eliminate it. This can enable you to use  slower shutter speed up to 2-3 stops (so for a 50mm in stead of using 1/60 you can use 1/25). Keep in mind that this only helps you with camera movement not with subject movement.

6. Invest in good lenses.

DSLR owners, if you have the budget for it invest in good quality lenses as they can have a major impact upon the sharpness of your images. For example I have a 28-135mm lens for everyday use. It is a good lens (and reasonably priced) but it isn’t as sharp as I expect to. I have borrowed a lot “L series” (the professional series of lenses from Canon) lens for different jobs and I was amazed by the difference in sharpness between the lenses. I have learned my lesson and now I am putting money in my piggy bank for some “L” lenses.

7. Clean your equipment.

Dust on you lenses or you image processor can impact you image sharpness. So remember to often check if your equipemnt is clean.

8. Lens Sweet spot.

Every lens has a “sweet spot” where has the maximum sharpness. This usually is 2-3 stops from the maximum aperture (the lowest value) of the lens. So if you have  maximum aperture of f/3.5, the maximum sharpness can be found somewhere between f/5.6 and f/9. Experiment with your lenses, take the same photograph from the lowest aperture value to the highest. A rule in photography is: “Know your equipment.”

9. Use Photoshop to increase your sharpness.

You can use Photoshop to increase the sharpness of your photographs, by using “Unsharp mask” or by using High Pass Filter (a better sharpening method) which I talked about it in a previous post.

Tags: Camera Gear, Canon, DSLR, Editing, Lenses, Nikon, Photo Test, Photography, Photoshop, Tips & Tricks