The secrets to sharper photos

It can be very frustrating to go away on a trip and, when you look at your photographs on a pc screen, find they're not sharp. I've put together a list of seven things you can do, to avoid blurry photos:
 

1. Check your settings.  Do you have the correct shutter speed set? Is your AF point in the right place? Have you got an unintended exposure compensation set? Make it a habit to check your settings and take test shots.
2. You are using the wrong shutter speed.  While shooting at 1,000th of a second will freeze a lot of the action, shooting faster is likely to give more reliable results. If I'm photographing a breaching whale, I'll typically use 1/4000th of a second to freeze everything. 
3. Pre-focus on your subject where you can and use long bursts. The number of useable photos you get becomes an exercise in statistics. If you're getting one good shot in 10, you won't have much to show from a burst of 6. A burst of 20 though, should give you at least 2 useable photos.
4. Look out for foreground objects that might completely blur out through the viewfinder, but will make their presence felt by leaving a 'fog' over the subject. Look directly at your subject (not through the viewfinder) and look for leaves, twigs or anything else close to you that might become a problem in the final image.
5. Use the lowest possible ISO. High ISO will introduce noise and this diminishes the sharpness of your subject. This is particularly true in low light. Take a 'safe' shot first (to make sure you get a photo of your subject) and then progressively reduce the ISO. Use a tripod (or other support), 'silent' mode, the 3-second self-timer, or a remote control to minimise any movement you might introduce when taking the shot.
6.  Set up a 'focus box'. Use this where you can't focus directly on your subject (e.g. porpoising dolphins). Set the focal distance and a suitable DoF to have a safe focus area.
7.  Make sure you understand the AF system on your camera. Use the appropriate mode and AF point(s). 

It's time for another podcast...

Transcript

>> Speaker A: 0:17

I think one of the most frustrating things that many photographers end up having to deal with is photographs that aren't sharp. And that's particularly frustrating if maybe you've been on a trip somewhere. It might be one of those trips you don't get to do very often or at all. It might be a one off and you think you've got some great shots. And then when you actually look at them on a PC screen. So rather than the screen on the camera, you find that the images just aren't sharp. So you can remedy that. There's things like Topaz Labs have, Sharpen AI things like that. But that's a whole nother step you don't really want to get into. So one of the things you can do when you're taking the photograph to help you not to get into that situation in the first place. Now, I've jotted down seven things here that you can do. So the first one is to get into the habit of checking your settings. So this might sound like a really obvious thing to do, but, it's actually a really good habit to get into because you can really trip yourself up with a simple mistake. Your camera, for whatever reason, might not be set the way you think it's set. So it's really good to just cheque settings regularly and certainly before you start taking photographs. So something I do as a matter of habit when I first grab the photo. So I've recently been on a trip. Very first thing I'll do in the morning is just cheque to see where everything's at. And then as I'm shooting, particularly if it's a time of day where the light levels are changing fairly quickly. So that would typically be at sunrise or early in the morning, and then again late in the afternoon or at sunset when the sun is changing its angle relatively quickly. The thing to remember here is that your eyes will automatically compensate. Your eye and brain will automatically automatically compensate for the available light. Your camera won't. So you need to be on top of your settings. So what are the kind of things that you need to think about? Well, first of all, just have a look. Make sure you've got the right ISO setting, the right shutter speed, the right aperture setting. And that might be something that you vary. I tend to use AF Pro priority a lot of the time, so I'll be varying that all the time. But also think of things like your AF point. What is your autofocus system actually focused on? And is it the point that you're using. So I typically will use the centre AF point because it's just easier to get, my focus set quickly. I use back button focus, so I'll tend to typically set that up and then recompose in the viewfinder. But I want to. But I use that central AF point, that smallest point. I'll talk about this later. If you've managed to somehow reset it to a different point, then what you think you're focusing on isn't necessarily what the camera is focusing on. another one is exposure compensation. So this may not affect the sharpness, but it will definitely affect the exposure, on the shot. So make sure you don't have any exposure compensation set that you don't intend to have there and just keep checking regularly. Just, as a matter of habit. It's a good habit to get into. It might take a bit of training to do that. But regularly look at the settings you have set up on the camera. Now, the next thing I'm going to talk about, and it's probably not the obvious one, and it's not the main reason that photographs tend to be out of focus. I'll come to that in a moment. but have a look at your ISO. And if you want sharp images, what you really want to do is make sure your ISO is as low as you can get away with. And the reason for that is that as you increase the ISO now, cameras are getting better as time goes on. So certainly the situation that you'll have today is likely to be a lot better than if you bought a camera 10 years ago. The ISO performance, certainly at higher ISOs is, likely to be much better. But ISO does give you grain in the pictures. It can contribute to a less sharp image. So you really want to get the ISO as low as possible. And the way to do that if you're doing wildlife photography, is to just, first of all, make sure you get a shot of the animal that's safe. And what I mean by that, it's as sharp as you can get, the ISO as high as it needs to be, and your shutter speed is as high as it needs to be to get a good sharp, maybe handheld shot of that animal. And I'm gonna talk about how you mount the camera as well. But I'm assuming that for most of the time you're gonna be holding by hand, which means you need a higher shutter speed to compensate for any camera shape you might put into that picture. So get your safe shot and then gradually, as much as you can just start dropping the ISO, keep the shutter speed the same or go even slower. So normally if you drop ISO, you would compensate by resetting the shutter speed to something faster. But you really want to get both of those as low as you can really. And things you can do to help yourself might be to for example, set silent mode on the camera. Look for any way of minimising the amount of vibration that might impact, the image itself. So safe mode, silent mode rather is likely to have less vibration. And the obvious things also to do, just find some way to rest the camera. Maybe if you have a beanbag or something, you can rest the lens. If you're using a long telephoto, just rest the lens on a beanbag on something, or if you don't have a beanbag, just put it on something solid. if you have a tripod that's really good or a monopod, have one of those. And using those can make a huge difference. However, it's not always possible in the situation you're in to use one of those. So this is why having something like a bean bag can be very helpful. You can also use a self timer. So most cameras you'll have a 10 second timer and a three second. And the purpose of those is 10 seconds if you want to be in the photograph. So if you're in some sort of a selfie, 10 seconds for most of us is time to run around to the front of the camera. Having pressed the shutter button, run around to the front and be in the photo. Three seconds. Obviously, unless you're saying bolt or somebody like that, you're not going to get in front of the lens that fast. So the idea of the 3 second is it just means your hands are off the camera when the shutter goes, so you're not introducing any movement by you pushing down on the shutter button. So think about using the self timers or a remote control if you have one of those, either the cable or a Bluetooth, whatever it is. Okay, so that's ISO, just keep that as, just keep shooting as low as you can and with a low shutter speed. And that can get you some really amazing M results. But you do have to bear in mind, first of all how the camera is being supported and secondly that your subject might run away or fly away, whatever it is you're photographing. So do make sure that you get that safe shot first and then begin to experiment. I'm going to talk about shutter speed next because that's really the big one. the Main reason that people get out of focus shots, is they're using too slow a shutter speed. Now, I often, when I'm talking about shutter speed, I'll often talk about, tenths and full seconds. Give, you those really long exposures, more ethereal things if you're shooting, for example, a river or where there's moving water, because the, as the water moves during the period that the shutter is open, it will tend to kind of blur and you get these really cool ethereal looks. So if that's what you're going for, that's great. if once you start getting to hundredths of a second, you're beginning to slow things down, but you're likely to still have movement in there. So, for example, if I'm shooting a racing car or maybe a, sports event, I'll tend to shoot at that sort of speed. 1, 1, 25th, maybe even 1m2 50th of a second because there's still going to be some sort of movement. It, might just be the back background is a bit blurry if I'm tracking while I'm shooting. But you get movement in the picture. Once you get to thousandths of a second, you begin to freeze things. So if you are going for the sharpest possible shot you can get, and I realise this is now saying the opposite to what I've just said about ISO and low shutter speed, but certainly if you've got something that's moving, so the low ISO and low shutter speed would really apply where you've got a stationary subject where it's not moving or not moving very much. If you've got something that's moving fast, it might be a bird in flight, it might be an animal running, could be whale breaching. Whatever it is. Dolphins, for example, you want to be as fast as possible. And I will often shoot at something like 1 4,000th of a second. So I'll go really fast because that absolutely freezes everything. So do think about your shutter speed. And my advice to you, if it's a moving subject, is make sure the shutter speed is as fast as you can get. So you might need to push the ISO up a little bit. Again, you've got to bear in mind, you know, how grainy is that going to make the image? so you've got to balance all these things out so that you get the best result. But the thing you need to decide is what's most important in a given situation. Is it shutter speed, is it ISO, all, that kind of thing. But essentially the main reason that people get out of focus, photographs is that the shutter speed is not high enough. So look at the shutter speed you've been using or the sort of speed you're using. If you're not photographing moving subjects in thousandths of a second, and that's what that is. My advice, bump it up, go to 1000th, 1 2000th of a second, 1 4000th of a second, whatever you can do. Experiment at those higher, faster shutter speeds and see what difference that makes. Now, in order to do that, you might also need to look at the support that you're, that you're using. So I'd still recommend using tripods if you can, even with very fast shutter speeds. but definitely look at shutter speed. Okay. What else can you do? Well, another thing is when you're photographing something that's moving, first of all where you can pre focus so that you just focus on the subject before you start shooting. So, this might apply where you can track, something moving towards you. So you want to get that focused, lock on. And I'm going to talk about focusing as well in a moment and then start shooting long bursts. And the reason for shooting long bursts is that often what happens is that in a lot of the images there's going to be a focusing issue. If something is moving fast, especially so it starts to come down to numbers. If you've taken six frames, the chances are that you might have nothing. if you're, let's say you average 1 in 10 is actually in sharp focus and M, it's simply down to where the animal is, where your subject is, if it's not an animal, how steady you are in that moment, how the shutter speed and the ISO working on the camera. So all of these things need to be in alignment if you like, for you to get a nice sharp shot. And when you're photographing something that's moving, that can be very difficult. So basically, the more photographs you take, the higher your burst, the longer your burst, the better your chances are of having a nice sharp photograph. So if you, let's say on average it's 1 in 10. If you've shot 6, there's a good chance you won't have anything. If you shot, 10, well, maybe you might have one shot in there. If you shot 20, statistically there's a good chance you've got a couple of images to choose from that are actually sharp enough to use. So bear that in mind. But I shoot a Lot of bursts. I usually have the camera on the fastest high speed burst mode and it's for that reason it gives me m. Well one of that's the main reason. It means there's a better chance I've got something usable. Ideally I've got more than 1 in 10. You know, it might be 1 in 3 for example or even 1 in 2 and then I can start looking at what's the position of the animal in terms of background, foreground, anything it's doing. Are there any parts I don't particularly want people to be seeing? Is this, you know, a child friendly environment etc, etc. But you have more choice. But if you start with long bursts in mind, you'll often find you've got a much bigger choice of good sharp in focus images to go with. Okay, another thing while we're talking about focus is to this more relates to composition but have a look at what's in the foreground and what I'm talking about here are foreground objects that because they're so close to you might be completely blurred out in the final image. But they, they will add some sort of a blurry haze. It's almost like shooting through a light mist. And you look at your image and there's nothing obviously in the way when you look through the viewfinder or on the screen at the back of the camera, but it's sort of blurry. You know, there's a sort of something in the way and the thing to always do is just look not through the viewfinder but look directly at your subject with your naked eye and look for anything. So this will tend to be much closer to you than your subject. But look for anything that might go completely out of focus so you can't see it there. It might be a leaf or a twig or something and just step to one side, move the camera slightly, just change your angle so that that thing is not in the viewfinder, it's not in the picture and you'll notice a big difference if that's the situation. So probably not something you're going to come up against too often but it's definitely something worth thinking about if you are shooting through glass. And this will happen typically if you're on a safari and you're in one of those vehicles and you know, one of these enclosed vehicles, which unfortunately I was in on one trip and you can't get a clean shot because of the way the thing's been parked relative to your subject. you Can. Generally you can climb up on the seat and get a shot in most directions, but often there are other people in the way too. And I've kind of made do with just shooting through glass. If it's reasonably clean, it's probably not a problem, but you're going to have all sorts of specs and things on it. So again, if you're in that situation where you can don't shoot through glass, try and shoot directly onto the, subject and make sure there's nothing physically that's going to be close to you that will become totally out of focus, but will make its presence felt in the final image by being out of focus. Okay. the other one to think about, and this is again, more to do with your camera settings, is if you're not sure of your focus, let's say something is moving or you might be shooting something that's moving too fast to focus on. And here, one of the examples I used to come up against a lot was photographing dolphins. If you look at the way dolphins call it porpoising, where they're jumping out of the water as they're swimming and there might be a whole load of them, you might have, a small group of dolphins, you might have as many as 100 there, and they're all porpoising. It means that out of the second, sorry, out of the ocean or out of the water for less than a second, typically. So there's absolutely no way you're going to be able to focus on an individual animal. So what I tend to do in that circumstance is I will set my focus point, my focal point. I won't use af. I'll do it manually somewhere in the middle of where I'm expecting those animals to show up, and then I'll just set a depth of field so that I've got a focus box is the way I tend to think of it. So there's a zone where I know whatever's happening in that zone will be in focus and I'll just point and shoot. So again, fast, high shutter speed, thousandth, maybe 1 2,000th of a second, 1 4,000th of a second, something really fast. Do a long burst. And obviously in that situation, the longer the burst the better, because you know that a lot of those images are going to have nothing in them or, you know, the back end of a, dolphin disappearance towards, you know, sort of, the kind of images you won't use. But somewhere in there, statistically, you know, the longer you shoot and with That a reasonable sized focus box there may be 1 in 20, 1 in 40, whatever it is, whatever you can manage. But you're likely to get at least one usable shot out of that. That's actually quite good. So you've got to set things up in your favour with a zone where you know whatever's in that zone will be in focus and then you just shoot as fast as you can to absolutely freeze what's going on. And as I'm recording this, I'm looking at a photograph of a dolphin that I got that I really like and it was shot using exactly that method. So think about how you're using your depth of field. And whereas with a lot of my shots I like to have very narrow depth of field because that way the viewer's eye is drawn to my subject because the rest of it's out of focus. There are definitely situations where you don't want to narrow depth field where you're essentially shooting blind. So you just want to stack things, stack the odds in your favour as much as you can. And then the final thing I want to talk about is autofocus and how have you set the autofocus up on your camera? Now this will depend on the modes you're using first of all and typically you might have so Canon do a couple of modes and again this will vary depending on the image that you are sorry, the camera that you're using. So you might have single shot af. So that basically. And look, I'm not sure what the equivalents are so I'm not going into that. But you're likely to have three modes typically so single shot is likely to be one of them that's really designed for stationary subjects. Tends to be the default mode, it's a good general purpose mode but basically you. And if you're using the standard autofocus set up on the camera so where the focus is set when you push the shutter button halfway down, what you may well find is if the camera can't get a focus, it won't let you push the button all the way down. So if you've come across that where you're trying to focus, where you're trying to shoot something but the, the camera won't let you push the button all the way down, the chances are you're in single shot AF mode and the camera, the AF system can't get a reliable focus so it's not letting you take the photograph. So that as I say is generally used for stationary subjects. So that if that's what you're shooting, that's probably the best mode to use. The other option is servo autofocus. So this is where the camera basically keeps refocusing, constantly refocusing basically because it's locked onto whatever you've told the camera that you want to focus on. So it will just keep resetting the, or relocking the focus for you. So that servo af, that's where you photographing a fast moving subject. So if that's generally what you're shooting and you're struggling with things not being in focus, then cheque your setting and try using servo AF so that the camera is refocusing onto that particular point continuously. the other one is the AI focus, AI focus. And basically that's where the camera is making the decision based on what you're photographing on which of those modes it's going to use. So that's where you start letting the a camera do some of the heavy lifting for you. So if that works for you, maybe give that a go. The important, the most important thing I think about autofocus though is that is the AF points you're using now. The cameras generally will give you a selection of AF points. You can use AF point combinations or even AF zones. These are basically how you tell the camera what you want it to focus on. And what I recommend is as a the general go to setting that I use is to use the smallest, so it's just a single AF point. I generally use the one in the centre of the viewfinder. So I mentioned before at the start looking at your settings and making sure you're using the AF point or the AF setup that you need to use. Well this is a good case in point. So, so I'll just generally go on a single AF point and when I'm photographing an animal I will set that point on the animal's eye and that will get. That means that my camera is then focused on that distance. So I use back button focusing. Once I've done that, I will recompose and go from there. If you're not using back button focus, what you can do is use the same technique to have a single AF point. Get your AF point on your, the thing you want to be in focus. So if it's an animal or a person it will be an eye and I generally shoot the eye closest to me. If I can see both of them and push the shut button. Halfway down and then keep it there. Once the focus lock has been made, you can then move as long as you don't release the shutter button and push it down halfway again. If you're on single, in fact in either mode, then take your shots. You can recompose as long as you keep your finger pressed at the halfway point and you don't release your pressure and repressure that button so that the camera refocuses. So that's one method of doing that and that's generally how I have my focus set up. However, the time when you won't want to use that is where you can't reliably or you can't get a good reliable lock on a single point. So this might be a bird, it might be fairly small in the viewfinder and, you just can't reliably get a fix on that, bird. This is where I use back button. So I'll just get my distance once and as long as the bird hasn't changed its distance from me too much, that will be enough. But if you're struggling with that, the thing to do is look at a small group of AF points to around the centre, because the chances are. But here the camera is interpreting. So you always need to be careful when you start using groups of AF points because if there's something in the way, the camera might decide that it's going to focus on something else because several of the af, points picked up that particular object. It may not be your subject. however, if you can't get a reliable focus lock on a single point, then that's where you need to think. Think, about using the zone, or the combination of focus points that cameras give you. So, look, I don't know what you're using, I don't know what your options are. You're going to have to cheque that one out for yourself. But by default. And I've got pretty good actually at locking onto a single point, even with a bird or something where it's harder to get a reliable lock with back button focus. Once I've got my focal distance set, as long as that isn't changing, so I, as in my, subject isn't moving towards me or away from me significantly, then I can kind of get away with that and just choosing a, depth of field that gives me again that focal, that sharp focus box that I can rely on. Okay, so just to, I guess review that, I'm going to run through this again, possibly in the wrong Order so make it a habit to just cheque your settings where you can use the lowest ISO but always remember to get a good safe shot first. But then experiment with dropping the ISO to get reduce that grain which is essentially electronic noise that gets into the picture and also reduce your shutter speed with that so you get the slowest possible shot. Again these aren't absolute rules. You're going to have to make judgement. Call yourself on what you do with shutter speed because you might want to keep that high. But do look at how you do drop the ISO just to reduce noise in the image. And this particularly true in, this particularly applies to low light situations where you probably will normally compensate by bumping the ISO up really high. Try and bring that down where you can. think about using the tripod or some way of mounting the camera if you can and using silent mode. Any way of reducing vibration at the time the shutter button is pressed. so think about the self timer, remote control, those kind of things. Be aware of foreground objects that might create, might go so out of focus that they're kind of blurry but across some or all of the image and that makes it look kind of odd, like you're shooting through a fog almost. Chances are that's what's happened. use longer bursts and pre focus where you can. So the reason for saying that is particularly if you're shooting something that's moving. So it might be an animal, could be a car, something like that if you're pivoting. so typically this would happen when I'm photographing whales. If I can pre focus on the animal, if it's moving towards me a little bit, then I will do that. But definitely you want to be using longer bursts when you. So it's hold your finger down and I just have my camera set to the high speed burst. So I'll do the fastest it will do with my EOS 5D. It tends to run out of puff a little bit. so you need to be aware of what the camera is capable of. My EOS 7D Mark 2 that will just carry on shooting. So that's great if I want to do really long burst sequences and so be aware of your, I've spoken about depth of field. Be aware of the autofocus modes on your camera and what you're using and are you using the right one for what you're shooting. You might have some tracking capability as well. So just look at what's available on the camera, and just spend the time understanding it, how to use it, because that can make a big difference too. And then just make sure that you're using the appropriate AF point or points for whatever you're shooting. Okay, so, and finally, with shutter speed, I think I might have skipped over that, which is probably the most important one. Yeah, do get. If you are photographing something that's moving, you want no movement in there at all. If you totally want to freeze the action. And if you're using, well, definitely using hundredths of a second, don't do that. If you're using something like 1/1,000th of a second, go faster. Just go as fast as you can. Bump up. Bump up to 1 2,000th of a second, 1 4,000th whatever option you, whatever options you've got with the camera and lens setup that you're using, but just go really fast and, see what difference that makes to your results. And the other thing I would suggest where you can use a tripod or some other way of mounting the camera in a really solid way, and also look at the difference that makes to your, photographs and start doing things like maybe reducing the ISO, getting that down to a minimum shutter speed, maybe lower that, maybe keep it high, but experiment with those setups. So, fast shutter speed and solid mounting are probably the two things to really think about if you, if you have options in those two areas. Okay, that's it for now. I hope you found that useful and I'll speak to you in the next podcast. Bye for now. Just before I go, I wanted to remind you that, first of all, I have an offer running, with, my free download. So if you go onto the website and there's a link at the bottom of the description of this particular podcast, and that will take you to a link, to where you can give me your email. I will send you, a PDF, which is 10 Simple Steps to improve your photography today. So it includes the kind of things that I talk about in the podcast. So it's all there in black and white with some examples. You can see what's going on. And also remember I offer, online photography courses. I do fine art. If you haven't checked out my galleries, please do. The links are, again, below the description of the podcast and don't forget to help me out. So you're welcome to subscribe both to the podcast and you can become a member of my Patreon membership and, join me there. So in that membership. You get, access to me. and also you get advance notice of things that are coming up. I'll tell you about other things that are going on that I don't share in my Facebook group or on Instagram or anywhere else, really. So it is, just a membership where, if you like what I do and you just want to be a part of it, the subscriptions are really low. It's just a cup of coffee a month. So, how much better could I be than that? So, please take a look and, I'll speak to you in the next podcast. Bye for now.