15 PRO SECRETS for SHARP pictures & video: Camera Settings, Lenses & More!
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- čas přidán 21. 07. 2024
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Have you ever had pictures that weren't quite sharp? We know the answer - yes - because EVERYONE does. In this photography & video tutorial, Chelsea & Tony Northrup cover 15 reasons why your pictures are blurry (with before & after photos) so you can get sharp pictures EVERY TIME.
0:00 Introduction
1:24 Camera Shake
3:51 Shutter Shock
4:54 Motion Blur
5:45 Missed Focus
7:46 Shallow Depth-of-Field
8:34 Diffraction (high f/stops)
10:24 Cropping
11:57 Air Quality
13:08 Soft Light
14:01 Dirty Lens
14:40 Cheap Filters
15:36 Teleconverters
16:53 Backlighting & Poor Contrast
18:18 Low-Quality Kit Lens
18:55 Full-frame Lens on APS-C Body
19:52 High ISO / Low Light
21:16 Microadjustments
22:24 AA / OLPF
23:44 Summary - Věda a technologie
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Good advice. You could set up your back focus button as your shutter release and use the shutter release button as your focus button. This helps gets rid of the shake too.
@@ytr8989 the pll76
🤣🤣🤣Loved that intro!!! My photos are not sharp because I got tired of comparing 40 photos to find the sharpest. Any software you could recommend that would do that for me?
Chelsea's humour is the best, loved the intro. Also a well done informative video that will surely help new shooters.
Chelsea surely is a wonderful girl - and her intro was amazing! ❤🩹
Don't call me Shirley! 😂
Nice try, but far away from her heartbeat. Not authentic at all. Snoop would have no comment on it. For good reasons, Thank god Tony is tony and Chelsea is also herself with much more facets about focus in the business and in live, general.
THX 4 sharing!
It’s so fun watching you two working together. Thanks for all the good information. Keep up the great work.
Something I found to work well when I get a picture slightly out of focus is to turn the picture into black and white and crank up the sharpness and play around with the light. I mostly take action pictures of mountain biking so the solution work well for me. It usually ends up looking like those old vintage action pictures from old magazines
Your videos are excellent and I always learn something new. My sharp pictures started with dull eyes. When photos were not sharp, I thought it must be the camera. On a hunch, I read about the diopter dial on my Nikon and made adjustments up and down while taking pictures. Found out, camera ok, i am not. Got glasses for day to day and made an adjustment on the diopter because shooting weatng glases is a pain. Everything perfect now and I owe it to the camera!
Excellent list! I’ll be recommending this video to my students and photographers in a local forum. One tip that was missed in the section on image stabilization, you mentioned making sure that it was turned on. However, if you are using a tripod, it must be turned off. I’m a college photography instructor, and I tell my students this all the time when it comes to architecture, landscape, and Astro work - and it’s definitely one of the most common mistakes! (And as a commercial architecture photographer, I can definitely admit that I still catch myself on this mistake once in a while!) Some cameras and lenses supposedly have a ‘tripod sensor,’ but in my experience, they simply cannot be relied upon. My personal rule is image stabilization is always off, and I turn it on when I need it (handheld portraits, events, general walkaround evening, etc.). ((And sometimes I forget to turn it back off again 🤦🏼♂️). Regardless, it must be turned off when you’re using a tripod.
Thanks for these reminders, it took years of learning this by making all these mistakes. Wish I had this 20 years ago!! I Love Chelsea's sense of humor, my favorite is still when you do the wildlife shoot and she comes by to ask all the questions and give advice, well done!!
you always provide value and education. Massive respect to you both. Keep it up!
I always love how you guys bring so much information. One of the things I never realized is the effect of backlighting on sharpness. I have an RX100 that I have been using for a while because I really value portability. But I have noticed that it doesn't love backlit subjects so much. I get a little bit of a haze that I have trouble resolving in post.
I had always thought that lenses just make it so that the light from a certain part of the view goes straight to a certain part of the sensor. And I thought that worked perfectly with every lens. In retrospect, I can see that that was a foolish belief, but thanks for disabusing me of it!
Great intro - and always a pleasure watching you two work together. TY for the tips.
1. There are a few problems with the reciprocal rule, but one of them is cropped sensor folks don't apply the crop factor. So a 100mm lens becomes a 150mm lens. The reciprocal is 1/150. In a photo course I took I was taught to go at least double the reciprocal rule or higher as you state. 2. Also with a zoom, lets say the 70 - 200mm lens, you have to use 200 as the number you are working with in reciprocal shutter speed, even if you shooting at the 70mm range. Now take that same zoom on a crop camera, and you have to know your long mm is not 200 but 300mm. 3. A tip I read in a Canadian photo mag is that the photographer shooting birds tried out, with great success, using a hunting shelter (tent) blind to photograph birds. You have to wait roughly 20 minutes for the birds to settle down after they have detected your presence. The photographer found this technique worked so well, he stopped using longer telephoto lenses, and stuck with his 70 - 200 mm lens. You can pick up one of these blinds for about $130 much cheaper than a Canon 600 lens. 4. And I just learned this and I can't explain it to you, can't say why it works. If a photographer is shooting in cold snow conditions, take your lens hood off, counter intuitive I know. 5. You did a review of I think four long zooms and you weren't happy with how the Sigma 150 - 600mm performed. At the time I can remember thinking, well did you make an adjustment to the lens using the Sigma USB docking station. If you had have said, - "you know what, we tried making adjustments to the 150 - 600 mm lens and we still got poor results" - I would have agreed with you. You did not.
Love the intro! Recently I learned that my point-and-shoot cameras automatically have more depth of field. When I started moving into bigger-sensor cameras, I was surprised that my pictures were not as sharp as expected. So I took some experimental pictures at different f-stops and shutter speeds to see what the differences were, and which gave the best results.
This was magnificent, exactly what I was looking for. Keep up the great work!
There is a program called "Amped Replay" that will actually remove camera movement blur and object motion blur.
It's actually designed as a tool for law enforcement forensic video analysis. For example removing motion blur on license plates
to enable identification of vehicles. I've tried it myself and it really works. There is probably some quality compromise somewhere
in the process, but nothing that I have noticed. Thanks both of you for great videos through the years. You guys are very appreciated!
Tony your books are well written & nicely hyperlinked. And Chelsea is a delight to learn from.
Just Love you Chelsea, that is a great Intro, you really add so much to your CZcams Channel don't ever Stop! Great Show , Broadway is waiting for you Chelsea!!
Great discussion. thank you. when shooting from a commercial airline at 30k, by setting the lens to max aperture and adjusting to get best max shutter speed, the plane window"disappears"and the underlying vibration of the plane(which can feel like its still)is almost eliminated. . also by shooting wider angle much of the shake can be reduced. then I can crop. I have often been amazed at the detail I can get of the ground , etc. This has also held true , to some extent when shooting through windows of the car and home. I would like you all to talk about the different focus pattern settings and how best to use them-
Wow! Thank you so much for this video! I know my camera is not the best (Canon 1200D/Rebel T5). I bought it when I entered college for all around media+graphic design. What you guys said about the ISO opened my eyes. Lowering the ISO really helped. Putting my camera on a tripod and lowering aperture solved the problem (use more light if needed). I can fix it in post most of the time. I love these educational video's. I find it hard to find information about these topics. If I do find them, they use terminology is so complex, that a beginner of some what advanced person can not understand it. Your explanation is clear and thorough. The examples really help with the visualization and helps me understand so i can process the information better. English is not my native language, so it really helps. Much love.
Great paced video that left no rock unturned. Fantastic, both of you.
You guys are so helpful in understanding photography! I have been using SonyA6000's and Sony A6400. Auto Focus has always been challenging. I got plenty of in focus, but sometimes when I thought I had a good shot it's all blurry. I'm finding if I keep the F stop at f8 and below things work great when at air shows. I have been watching you guys since I bought my first Sony A5000. Thanks so much!
Thanks for this vid. I've been searching for the Holy Grail of explanations for this biggest of problems and NOTHING has come even close to this comprehensive and fun-nerdy list. You guys are great! Thanks again.
Great information and reminders to stay sharp. You two are the best!
You guys are great! I appreciate you taking the time to give us information.
Fabulous video. It's been 6 - 12 months since I saw one of you twos videos. You are truly fabulous together and both experts in photography. Thank you. I've got 45 years experience and 120,000 photos one at a time. I have a Sony A7 mark 1 and 24-105 F4 G Lens. The lens is truly legendary and the camera is my first super digital camera it's like taking my 1981 Contax 139 35 mm camera the tops in it's day and adding a Supercomputer to it. I got it for $500 3 years ago used 1 week open box Best Buy Canada. I gig the lens half price only used for 1 day it was a Covid special as the oringal buy was ready to tour the world until Covid hit and I bought it $1,000 off in perfect condition. It is a dream lens. I took 75,000 photos in under 3 years with that camera and lens. Your Videos Tony and Chelsea and the best in photography. They also have entertainment value.
Really great video! Thanks for all the tips and I am looking forward to trying them. Keep up the great videos!
I think this is one of your best videos yet. 😊
Yea this was a good one.
what a great intro xD. Chelsea nailed it!
Love your show. Always useful, detailed and extremely helpful information.
This is terrific guys. You covered so much useful information, rapid fire, making this one packed video. Excellent. You explained some issues I have encountered and given me a solution. How good is that. Thanks so much.
Your videos are such a blessing to me!
Quality content and great intro!
Great video! I’m going to watch this many times over the years.
GASP ! It was Chelsea all along ! ;-) As always, thanks.
Extremely useful. Great reminders and some new considerations.
Love the intro, you are amazing, thanks for the videos
Your tips are always worth my time.👍
Thanks for sharing.... great video & comments to help with understanding out of focus pics.....I always find its when I am in a hurry to get the photo because it is moving..... cheers 😀
Also for camera shake, and not so much cause by you, the user, but if you're using a DSLR, see if you camera support mirror-up mode. Some do, and this can help reduce vibration from the camera if you can use this mode. I know people doing long exposures find this useful (like landscape shooters or astro shooters). It helps minimize the vibration from the mirror coming up before the exposure is taken, and allow the sensor and camera to settle a little before the exposure is taken (pair this with a short self-timer, like 2 or 5 seconds).
For missed focus, just take the extra second and make sure that the AF point is where you want it and also that the camera confirms focus (either by a beep or by the focus point changing color, like on NIkon ML bodies, its turns from red to green when focus is locked).
For apertures, if I have the time, I've just started doing some focus stacking (mainly when doing landscapes and shooting things that aren't moving as this method can take a bit longer... an additional say 20-30 seconds more in some cases). This way you can get the best of both worlds (use the "sweet" spot and get everything in focus, but it's only really needed when you need most or all of the scene in focus and the depth of the scene is deep, like a grand landscape, although you can get away with something like f/11 or f/16 in most cases and don't always need to focus stack -- I mainly use it when I have a foreground, mid-ground and background that all need to be in sharp focus).
That was such a great post Tony and Chelsea! Another suggestion would be to get sharp photographs you should use a tripod whenever possible!📷
Great video. Despite almost 70 years taking pictures I find that my focus is off sometimes. This covers the solutions really well.
Humor and knowledge! I love you, guys. You helped me set the first steps on probably a long journey. Even so the set-up of the Nikon D7200 is quite a challenge you made it easier with the information and most important fun to try. Thanks a lot, greetings from Holland
Great intro Chelsea! LOL! That was awesome.
I had to take a double take on that first take :-) love you guys!
Great Video,very informative and educational.
Hi tony thanks for great tips , just a question : is it right that any lens has its sharpest point in a specific diaphragm like 7-8 or 9-10 f number and in other f numbers the sharpness decrease ?
Thanks great info, I recently have stopped using back button focus as a default choosing to use it selectively as needed found my portraits much crisper as the shutter release and focus are instant.
Also this video is a lot more richer and sharper, in addition the lighting appears color balanced is this something new?
An additional one I found is refraction caused by my lens being 20+ degrees hotter than the air around me outside. I’m thinking the front glass is heating up a layer of air held there by my large lens hood on my 600mm. I take the hood off and the problem went away, put it back on and the problem immediately came back. Plus in high wind situations or I let my gear adjust to the environment for at least an hour I don’t have that problem.
Great video guys! So many great tips, especially rolling the finger over the shutter rather than just pressing the lens which I do. Also. I remember a previous video when Tony mentioned taking the pictures as you exhale for minimal shake when taking the pic. Love watching your videos! Keep up the great work!
Great video guys.
Interested to get your thoughts on how turning off image stabilization can affect sharpness, ie when using a tripod, or shooting at super high shutter speeds (birds in flight).
I'm not a pro, but have been advised many times that on a tripod the IS should be turned off
Thanks. This is helpful. I know a lot of this, but it is good to know others do not get perfect focus all the time either.
Always appreciate your valuable input. Many thanks
Thanks for this! Lots of good tips!
Thank you for these tips. Is micro adjustments the same as lens calibration correction?
you guys are a riot. i love you both.
I was hypnotic during the square space ad because of the glimpse of the Girl with the pearl Earing. Haven't seen that in a while.
Thanks for excellent teaching. To me I would like to hear about shooting modes, such as aperture priority, speed priority or manual.
Thank you! Chelsea - your journey from the heavier and lower-res Canon kit to Sony A7riii was identical to me... accept it's taken 3 years of frustration for me to realise that it's my fault! My airshow low-shutter-speed trying to capture propellor movement has been a constant frustration to me. I even got the new A1 on evaluation from Sony NZ to experiment with - I sucked with that too. It was simply your start to this video that showed me that my technique was at fault.
My Canon 5D3 had the battery grip and 100-400mm lens and it weighed a ton! That 21mp combo had so much mass that it didn't shake lol. In the past 2 weeks I've got the extra battery grip for my A7riii and changed how I hold my camera (plus the awareness that I need to reduce movement) and I'm finally winning. Just this morning I've shot a heli at 5000' - me looking straight up with my A7riii + 200-600 at 600mm. 6/8 shots were sharp! YESSSS! Thank you, both off you for these videos.
Dude I love you Chelsea and Tony
Thank you guys for your great content.
What I have learn from this video is that Tony changed a lot over the course of the time ... while Chelsea remains the same.
I have bookmarked this video and had already repeated 10 times to memorizing all the points, I hope these points will pop in my head next time that I am about to shoot.
Thank you so so so much for this video and this helps a lot.
Nice well rounded video
Love your humor Chelsea and all the content you both post! Would you please share what camera and lens are you using to recording this? TIA
Great video 👌 I was just out the other day trying to shot fast moving bird's, when I got home 🏡 noticed that the Iso was too high for some of the shots. I am shooting with a Canon 90d and 18- 300 Sigma lens. I am looking at a Canon 70-200 f-4 what do you think please any input will help.
Great tips! Thank you for sharing them.
Great work guys thanks for your videos they are so help! 👇
Just love your channel
Been following you guys since 2009. Love all the information reviews…and continuing ed .
Great recommendations! I'm definitely going to try some of these. I shoot birds/wildlife. It's always tough to get closer. Your aperture suggestions opened my eyes. I'm aware of AA/Low Pass Filters. Lots of my friends shoot with the D500. It doesn't have the filter so no issue. I'm shooting with the R6 + 100-500mm IS USM L. What's the situation with the Low Pass filter on this camera? Sometimes I wish I had started my journey with Nikon just for this issue. I'm too invested in gear now to switch. Thanks Tony and Chelsea for another informative video.
I shoot with the very 7d mark II referenced in the video. If your settings are right and the focus is right it’s really not an issue. Take several pictures and make sure the focus is on and you won’t even notice it
As someone using a bottom of the range Canon with cheaper lens, I’m always looking for ways to improve the sharpness, this has to be the most comprehensive and informative video I’ve ever seen. Thanks so much, you’ve given me lots to consider and try out 👍
You guys are Awesome!!!
Really helpful. I learned a lot. Many thanks for this.
you guys did a great job! sharp and unsharp filters are useable as well - thanks
You had me at the intro! Chelsea is the best! 😄
Awesome videos. One additional tip: Use single point focus. Try to avoid "zone" or other types of selection which select multiple auto focus points.
Great advice!
Is there any difference between mechanical shutter or electronic shutter in connection with sharpness of images. (Sony A7IV) Very nice video with lots of tips.
Great video!
As always - great advice.
Haha, that was excellent Chelsea. Thanks for another very helpful video.
Question if I have a bunch of Nikon glass and I want the Canon r5 should I get it and use adapter or just get Nikon z9
Hello Tony & Chelsea, love ur videos over the years and the lessons learned over the years were helpful. However.....I am now legally blind/low vision and resorted to using my smartphone to take photos. I parked my beloved DSLR gears......*sigh*
Any tips or suggestions you can give a blind tog?? I now shoot mainly landscapes and sunsets.....ohhh and I can't see colors anymore. So lemme know if you have any suggestions, thanks 😁
Great info!!
whatever you did with the color grading and iq in the garden, keep it up! very pleasing image!
Omg the Snoop 420. I freaking love you and Tony!
Where would you put the D750's AA filter? Heavy or little impact?
(Thanks for all the great videos!!)
Being 74, but not without any hint of Parkinsons (yet), I still have some "age shake". So, I have found that the 20fps of my R5 with electronic shutter allws me to even take lunar photos hand-held (EF 100-400 with a 2x converter (i.e. f11 even with the EF/RF converter)). Yes, I have to go through a bunch of shots and yes I "ususally" get 10-50% or so that are usable.
I do need help, when i first got my T7i i got sharp pictures. now all my picks seem out of focus. there are times looking through the viewfinder when the camera is auto focusing the picture is very sharp but passes by this to settle on out of focus shot. I must all so say, i take my camera on my motorcycle. I have tried to look it up to find if the vibration of my bike is bad for my camera, and can not find any info if it is bad or not bad? Any feed back would be helpful.
How do I overcome my anxiety when coming into contact with many strangers?
Meeting new people has always been horrendously difficult for me, and I’d only fairly recently gotten to the point I can decently handle and present myself one or two strangers at a time. But that’s still a long way from being able to handle events, such as weddings. There a better way I can utilize my photography in a way I can sidestep my weaknesses?
Love your videos.
I'm a newbie and you two are adorable and so talented...I'm eating up your book and course.
All i can hope for in life is to have a relationship like Chelsea and Tony. You two are great together 😍
I'm confused between resolution, spatial fidelity and raw sensor.
So even if you have high resolution, spatial fidelity is the clarity when zooming in?
Hi if you had to pick or buy one camera what would it be? a Canon Nikon Sony etc.
I've tested vintage medium format lenses on both full-frame and APS-C bodies. The sharpness was on par with my dedicated macro lens, plus edge-to-edge flat sharpness. The only limitation is the manual focus, however it's a small price to pay for critical sharpness.
I like your work 👍🏻
What about micro adjustments on lenses? I have two Tamron lenses that I can micro adjust the sharpness for different focal distances. But I use the same lenses on the 5Diii and the r5. Will the mirrorless automatically compensate?
Micro adjustments are rarely beneficial. In fact, talking with tech support people at lens manufacturers, micro adjustments cause WAY more problems than they solve - it's one of the top causes of focusing problems.
Many third-party lenses simply don't focus accurately - they might front- or back-focus. When you apply micro adjustments, you might improve the accuracy of your test scenario only to hurt the accuracy in real-world scenarios.
The real best solution to this is to use continuous AF, snap off several shots with varying focusing distances, and pick the sharpest shot in post.
Thx for the tips!!!
how good is a canon rebel ti5 aps-c dslr camera body with a canon 24-70 f-2.8 full frame lens on the body?
Have to say, best intro ever......lol love the hat, I think Peters got some competition on the cool factor now lol
Is this a Peter thing? I think I learned it from everyone who copies him 🤣
I get what looks like motion blur when I shoot with high speed sync and Studio strobes (outdoors) I'm wondering if because the strobe is pulsing that it might be picking up small movement between either myself or the subject. Do you have any advice for shooting with high-speed sync or shooting with flash?
Interesting comment on Micro Adjustments. I had my 1DX mk2 professionally calibrated with my EF 100-400mm mk2 and EF 600mm F4 L IS mk2 and immediately saw improvements on all my photos.
Awesome energetic review! Even if I am totally not into the high res pixel - peepable sharpness, I should not exaggerate! And think about your tips, maybe even use some.
Talking about blurry photos - I wonder how small the number of photo people on CZcams is, who really have studied the works of classical photojournalists. Even epic Henri Cartier-Bresson published (!) out of focus photos! In his heyday, 1940ies & 50ies, the choice of 35mm / Leica, Zeiss, meant a serious drop in image quality. Not to mention that eye AF did not exist for rangefinders. Even the crumpy photos of Weegee the Famous were mostly taken on the Speed Graphics 4x5, a camera offering a film size of roughly 15 times of the Leica.
The amazing autobiography of Robert Capa is titled Slightly out of Focus. I thought this was for a reason. I now think it was for a range of reasons.
Coming back to sharpness. In certain scenarios long exposure on a poorly fixed camera are unavoidable. In this case even longer shutter speeds might be okay to marginalize the initial shake - Found myself next to the landmark Pont dArc in Southern France with very little of the daylight left. And felt like trying for a shot. Camera adjustments were partly tricky as only the more basic settings on my Nikon are illuminated. The camera stood on a tree stump. As I somehow lost touch with the self timer setting ( it should have next, to the left of the quiet shooting mode I mostly use) I opted for a rather long shutter speed. Worked fine- as a souvenir or even for IG as the last of a series of photographs few people are looking at to the end