Help with a specific lens... Or directions where i can find tutorials

yeah, that's your problem.
You need to be about at least a foot away for a 50mm to focus

and for future reference, don't forget to include your lens make I'm assuming it's a nikkor but just remember that other companies make lenses that fit nikons. For this question, though, make of the lens won't change the answer

 

What Knibitz said. Too close! There is a handy thread here with some suggestions for helping your autofocus work. http://www.denofangels.com/forums/showthread.php?462873-Autofocus-and-manual-focus-not-working-anymore&highlight=macro

If you want ultra close shots, you might want to invest in a macro lens (expensive) or macro tubes (not nearly so expensive) as they will allow you to get within a few centimetres and still focus. A discussion on the pros and cons of extension tubes here http://www.denofangels.com/forums/showthread.php?478095-Extension-Tubes-Any-suggestions&highlight=macro.

Good luck!

 

The 50mm is a standard lens, not a macro lens. Nikkor lenses that have macro capabilities have "micro" written on the lens, and they're usually more pricey than the standard lenses.

The 50mm f1.8 is usually a very sharp and versatile lens. Perhaps you're using the lens wide open (at f1.8, the lowest number)? I find that things tend to look softer because of the narrow depth of field. For a f1.8 lens its optimal sharpness will be around f4 and above, but even so I get great results at f2.8.

Hope that helped. :>

 

Might also be shake, if you had a long exposure and dim light. A tripod works well for that. It also looks quite grainy. What ISO are you on? You look to be at a decent distance for it to be able to focus, providng that is not a teeny little doll.

 

A 50mm is considered a portrait lens and it is very popular for doll owners. Macro is really going to suit you better for extreme close ups, but it's also another popular lens for doll owners - especially for artists attempting to capture details of their outfits, face ups, mods, etc.

To fix the softness problem - one thing you may need to check is to make sure that your camera is calibrated to work with that lens. I had the same problem when I got my d7000. With the shallow DOF it looked like nothing was in focus, so I messed with the camera settings, mainly ramping up the sharpness and now it's spot on.


And leaving off where rainwaltz started. f/1.8 can be a little too low at times, but I generally bounce between 1.8 and 3.0 for my shots. However, my style tends to lean towards a very sharp subject and very soft background, so that's why those f/stops work for me.


(and just to note, I have the exact same lens you're having problems with XD)

 

Like Knibitz, I also use the 50mm f1.8 (I would prefer a f1.4 version, though!), but it's a little too wide on my full frame camera so I tend to prefer my 24-70mm f2.8 for doll photos. :>

 

ah, try upping your iso to 200 too, that may help

Generally the "standard" ISO is 200

100 is generally good for human portraits to really help soften the face and avoid picking up pores and whatnot. (someone correct me if I'm wrong here, this one isn't really my strong point)

 

There is no right answer for this, but I personally think of 400 as average ISO. For an SLR-class camera, this still gives good noise performance but gives you more flexibility - faster shutter speed to freeze subject motion with less handheld camera shake - generally good things. If you decide to use flash, it's a little easier to balance with ambient light also; the flash becomes "more powerful". I may or may not use flash on a whim, so 400 is a good general purpose ISO for me; I can set it and forget it. I generally only use lower ISOs if it's really sunny. (Also, general-purpose negative film happens to be ISO 400, which undoubtedly has affected my opinion.)

Still, when you shoot at f/2, depth of field is very narrow, so not necessarily all of the doll will be in focus. (Like: front eye ok, rear eye not; or eyes ok, ears not.) Something that is not in focus will appear "soft". Just saying. I prefer f/4-5.6, but I'm usually quite close, only ~1 meter away from the doll.

 

It's not the ISO or length of exposure causing the blur, then (unless you have VERY shaky hands). Hm. I am assuming that the lens stopped "hunting" (going back and forth, trying to focus) before you took this shot. In fact, you likely wouldn't be able to take the shot before the autofocus has settled on something. What part of the picture did you set your autofocus on? Generally, portraits work best if you focus on the eyes. However, this is a pretty low contrast picture so it might not have given the system an opportunity to take a clear reading (autofocus works best if you place your autofocus point on an area of high contrast). Closing your aperture down a bit would certainly help as there would be more of the image in focus. I would go to f4 or even f5.6, if your background is far enough away. You will still get all that lovely bokeh, but also get a crisp subject. f2.8 is still pretty wide.

I tend to shoot at ISO200 in bright light and ISO400 in dimmer light.

 

yeah, from the look of it, you really probably could have gone with ISO200 in that lighting situation, if anything that might have been too bright.

your shutter speed (this isn't your exposure. Exposure is the combination of aperture and shutter speed) needed to be amped up in this situation to help compensate for the over exposure.
It's really hard to tell from looking at a photo on your camera to tell if it's over or under exposed at times, so get familiar with what Histograms are, and how to abuse them while taking photos.
The day I stopped looking at my histogram and understanding it as I shot, adjusting my settings just became second nature. To view your histogram in your preview screen, hit the up button on the back of your camera a few times when your preview screen is up, you'll go through a series of menus but one (or two) will have the histogram.
You may also pass a screen where your photo is flashing. That flashing indicates where there are over exposed spots in your photo - that's also a really helpful tool and can really help while you're still figuring out histograms.

 

Do you have a spot metering option on your camera? The darker one looks crisper and better exposed overall. The light one against the dark background is overexposed, which often happens if you are using average metering (so, the camera looks at the entire scene and takes an average reading, leading to overexposure of any very light bits and underexposure of very dark bits). If you don't have spot metering, you might be able to stop down a stop or two, to compensate. It's what I tend to do as I don't trust my camera's metering abilities. The darker one might also be in better focus as there are areas of greater contrast there, helping the auto focus.

As for depth of field, sthis still looks very limited on f4. Look at the legs. They are not much off the plane of the face, but are pretty blurry. The crispest part is the wisp of hair on the right of her head. I wonder if the camera is focusing on the right thing. You say that the autofocus point covered her whole head on that half-length portrait shot? That sounds like an awfully large area for it to cover. I am not familiar with your camera, so can't tell if there is something wrong with that. Any more Nikon-friendly people out there?

 

*nikon friendly at the ready*

we do have a metering option. It's just under the menus. I never mess with it, honestly, but it's there.

And for me, I agree, the focus is on her bangs, not on the face.
your focus point (the box/boxes) it brings up, should always be on the eyes for portraits. So try to make sure that that's where those boxes pop up.


OK, I found a photo that might help you gauge how close you can get to your doll if you have decent lighting.
The photo is a crappy one, so please don't judge me XD

But I think that's getting close to the limit of high close I can get.
(this doll is an SD sized Leekeworld Unsold Head [Ronald])

 

Nikon-friendly here too, but I'm on a full frame so I can't help with how close you can get because my frame naturally looks wider without the 1.5x crop factor. The closest I can go is a portrait from the doll's midsection and up, like so:



The photo appears sharp on the camera screen simply because the screen is much smaller. XD Viewing the photo on a computer blows it up and gives you a more accurate idea of how it looks. Definitely, I think being an overexposure leads to the photo appearing less sharp -- photos tend to look sharper with greater contrast, and the brightness washes out the details of the face.

I also second using spot metering, especially with tricky lighting situations. The options that allow you to change the metering mode should be in the menu, or you can check your manual if you can't find it. Again, I use a different model so I have a physical button right next the the viewfinder that allows me to change it.

 

Ahhh, I see what you mean. You can change your focus to single point focus, so you can always focus on your doll's eyes instead of letting the camera choose where to focus on (hair or nose or mouth).

1/400 is your shutter speed, it basically means 1/400 or 0.0025 of a second. At that speed handshake issues should be eliminated.

The last photo at f6.3 looks sharp, whee~ You can use a reflector for such photos to get more her face to be more well lit, but it's not strictly necessary and won't affect how sharp it is. If you adjust the contrast, you'll see that the photo is actually quite clear and in focus.



(Sorry, I took the liberty of just brightening the photo to show you!) The only edit I did was adjust the contrast using Curves in Photoshop. :>