This may be one of the craziest questions you ever read.. but,
Recently I got a black, grey, white target to set white balance.
When I use my 2 alien bees 800s, canon 60d, canon 24-70 2.8.. hand held..
In the past I always got clear, crips photos..
But doing the settings to get the histogram correct with the target... all my photos.. the eyes are not crisp..
Shooting at:
Shutter Speed 250
f16, f22
iso 100
54 mm and others. Even at 70mm.
Does the fstop settings have anything to do with Crispness, sharpness?
F22 will more then likely be the softest aperture to shot at due to diffraction. Most lenses are optimized for sharpness between f4-f8. The more you stop down past f11the more diffraction will impact sharpness.
Bruce Sawle wrote:
F22 will more then likely be the softest aperture to shot at due to diffraction. Most lenses are optimized for sharpness between f4-f8. The more you stop down past f11the more diffraction will impact sharpness.
Thank you so much for your help...
Now I have to go back to the drawing board..
Figure out how to get great photos, white balanced using the ab800s, and my setup.
Atleast now I know why the test photos were all blurred
alohadave wrote:
Not necessarily. You could just be shaky. Post up a 100% crop and an uncropped version for comparison.\
Will do all posted here..
But, I forgot, using my 70-200 was always crisp for portraits, I forgot, the 24-70 is NOT IS.. only usm.
You could be right.. I may be too shaky for the NON is lens.
At any rate, going to start at f8, low light on AB800s.. and work up..
Will work up a post of the photo as well.
Below is reduced to 1000 pixels wide.
Soft eyes.
exif is entact
OH SHOOT, AFTER I LOOKED AT THE EXIF.. I SHOT THIS WITH MY 70-200..IS, USM..so possibly I had the is on the wrong setting.
Updated, I checked the settings on the lens, I had all correct for distance, is and af.
That picture is tack sharp. No blurriness that I can see. Look at the hairs, they are a dead giveaway that you nailed the focus on this shot. The eyes are in focus and that is the most important part.
RustyBug wrote:
+1 @ f16/f22 ... you don't need to be stopped down that far.
If you are concerned at sharpness, f16 & f22 are counter-productive to your goals.
Just to clarify, while tecnical considerations are important, my main concern is more aesthetic. It doesn't matter as much when shooting in front of a plain background, but I do think there's a subtle difference even here. The relative sharpness of the ears and shoulders determines how much they compete with the face. I just prefer the look of a portrait with a medium telephoto (85mm on FF) at f 4 or even 2.8.
+1 @ aesthetics of portaits regarding DOF and drawing your viewers eye where you want it to go ... and not go. While it may not be as "thin" as 2.8 ... going from 16 down to 5.6 will be a marked difference in DOF also ... but with a little more "safety" factor for now. Before long, he'll be wanting an f 1.0.
Since his question began as a technical one regarding sharpness, I tried to keep it in that realm ... but yes, there are more implications (technical & aesthetic) regarding aperture choice than just sharpness.
you won't always want to shoot at the "sharpest" aperture for your lens
I really think you need to get your monitor calibrated.
You had been posting shots that were too dark, but it seems they didn't look too dark on your monitor.
Now that you're using an exposure target your images aren' too dark, but now you're seeing them as soft when we see them as sharp.
That suggests that the brightness and/or contrast of your monitor may be incorrectly set.
On the other hand, maybe we don't know what your mean by "soft." Maybe you're using the term in a way that's different from how we use it. In another thread you said you wanted skin tones "soft, not white" -- two terms that refer to different aspects. Maybe it would help if you try to explain in more detail what it is that you think is wrong with the eyes in the above photo.
