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Photography Photography help - Having trouble with clear, detailed pictures!

Apr 28, 2014

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    1. I've included some of my most recent pictures, where I tried to take the advice of all the guides/tutorials I could find in the photography section. My biggest issue is how blurry he looks without me going into photoshop and sharpening his pictures. I would really love advice on how to get clear, nicely detailed pictures. Ideally I would like to get pictures that had the same detail and quality that these examples have: this and this. I realize that might not be possible due to my current skill of photography, though!

      Currently I'm using a Canon S95 I got grandfathered to me, so I'm not sure exactly how to use it to its full potential. I've mostly been using its fluorescent setting (daylight setting dimmed the colors too much) and its close-subject mode. The lighting sources for these pictures include a normal desklamp with a piece of paper on it to soften its light, pointed straight at his face; a bright open window with lots of natural light, pointed at a front-left diagonal to his face; and an ordinary lamp behind him to the right.

      I would appreciate all advice. I do already know that the dark background was a bad choice, because it blends into his hair. Thanks!


      With No Editing:

      [​IMG]

      [​IMG]

      With no editing (one light source: natural light):

      [​IMG]

      With Sharpen:

      [​IMG]

      [​IMG]
       
      #1 kalhirst, Apr 28, 2014
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    2. Hm. Could be a whole raft of things. Difficult to say from those.

      Possible culprits

      1. Motion blur. You are hand holding your camera and the exposure is too long, meaning that the slight movement of your hand blurs the image. Solutions, use a tripod or reduce your exposure time by using a brighter light or increasing the ISO.

      2. You are not focusing on the right part of the image. For a portrait, you should set you focus on the dominant eye, which is usually the one closest to the camera. On these, some other parts, like the chain, seem to be in better focus, so that might be contributing. If you use auto focus, make sure your autofocus point is over the eye (sorry, long time since I have used a Powershot and can't remember what they look like).

      3. You are too close to your subject, meaning that the subject is closer than the minimum working distance of your lens and it can't focus. You might hear your auto focus system "hunting" (extending and retracting the lens, trying to focus). I can also do a sort of "jolt", where it tries to focus and gives up. Solution, move back a little and see if it can focus more easily.

      4. Lots of noise from too long an exposure or too high an ISO. Even with a tripod, a long exposure will introduce random noise (the graininess in the picture). Solution, more light, either a stronger bulb in your lamp, moving your lamp closer to the subject or waiting for a brighter day (bot no direct sunlight as you will lose those nice, soft shadows).

      Watch out with your sharpening as you are overdoing it slightly. You can tell this by looking at the sharp areas (like the hair and the chain) and the lines have slight "halos" around them. Turn it down a bit. I sharpen on a duplicate layer and them reduce opacity until I get just enough sharpening to do the job.

      Also, think about your white balance. Your various light are different temperatures (daylight and tungsten). They therefore need different white balances, none of which is fluorescent. The easiest way is to set the WB to auto. It's not perfect, but it will do whilst you are practicing. When you have the patience, set custom white balance for each situation. That will avoid the colour casts there are.

      Overall. these are not too bad at all on blur. Try some of those and see if it helps.
       
      #2 MadamMauMau, Apr 28, 2014
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    3. Thank you very much, MadamMauMau! I am certainly going to try each of these steps to see if they might be what's causing the images to be unfocused. I imagine that the motion blur must be part of the problem, even if it isn't the only one, because I did take the pictures while holding the camera in my hand (instead of keeping it on a tripod). I'm going to invest in a nice tripod soon so that I won't have that problem too much in the future.

      Thank you for the advice about sharpening his pictures! I am unused to sharpening, so I haven't yet developed an eye for what looks good and what's too much. I will certainly keep an eye on that in the future!
       
      #3 kalhirst, Apr 28, 2014
      Tools
    4. Before you get a tripod you can try setting the camera on a stable object and use the timer mode, that way your hand isn;t touching the camera when the photo is taken.
       
      #4 SteamWitch, May 4, 2014
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    5. It could also be your lense. When I finally broke down and purchased a prime lense I noticed a huge improvement in my photos.
       
      #5 Isenn, Jun 3, 2014
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