EOS R50 pictures not sharp

[nicolemeza94]

I took some pictures and they look ok in the camera, but I noticed that they aren't detailed/ sharp. Any suggestions? What settings can I use so that my pictures are always super detailed? Pictures taken outdoor/ indoor.

[stevet1]

nicolemeza94,

I noticed in the photo you provided, your ISO was set at 800. I wouldn't think that you would need an ISO that High for a sunny day. You can see that reflected in the way the buildings in the background are all blown out.

Your photo was a CR3. Do you have the DPP4 photo editing software? Using DPP4, you can edit RAW files, and there is a setting (down at the bottom) to add sharpening if you want.

Steve Thomas

[jrhoffman75]

Can you post one or more original files in One Drive or Dropbox so we can examine it?

[nicolemeza94]

https://photos.app.goo.gl/yciXYAgLsR2hgEfB9 

[p4pictures]

I looked at your gallery page, but could not find the original RAW image. The people on the forum can help you by examining the RAW image since it contains much more information that will help identify a solution. Things that we can find from a RAW file include your AF settings, where the AF point is and this might be the source of your reported lack of sharpness. 

Can you also briefly outline your post processing, what software you use and what you do to the images with that software. Some skin smoothing presets might be applied beyond skin and soften the whole image for example. 

So from a visual look at the pictures, it appears that part of the reason the people don't appear sharp is that they are similarly sharp to the surrounding scene, so there is a lack of contrast in the sharpening. Since your posted info shows that you used f/8 this might be part of the reason. I did check a few of the images in the gallery and they do look quite sharp on the people, though 1/125th shutter speed is about the slowest you can go for photos of people and avoid subject movement resulting in blur on the subject. 

I would advise shooting with 1/200th and open the aperture to around f/5.6 or even f/4 to help increase the difference in the sharpness and avoid subject blur which cannot be overcome with image stabilisation. 

[johnrmoyer]

I hope some of this might be helpful to explain why the photo might be sharper in camera than in other software.

If one uses Canon DPP software, the same sharpening will be applied to the CR3 file as was applied in the camera. In DPP, the photo is likely to look more like it does in the camera than when using other software.

I found this helpful: https://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/sharpness.htm  

A digital photo nearly always needs an unsharp mask. Most photo editing software can do unsharp mask. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsharp_masking and sometimes more than one unsharp mask with different radius and threshold might be useful.

In the camera, maybe "digital lens optimizer" was enabled https://cam.start.canon/ky/C011/manual/html/UG-05_Shooting-1_0240.html#Shooting-1_0240_4 which will make many photos appear sharper. This is also done as "capture sharpening" in rawtherapee free software. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richardson%E2%80%93Lucy_deconvolution 

Canon DPP software will do "digital lens optimization" much like the camera does but allow one more fine grained control of the amount. 

In the camera and in Canon DPP there is also a "clarity" setting that may make some photos look sharper, but skin might look better if "clarity" is set to minus one.

Using curves to adjust the image in software might also make it more like in the camera. In Canon DPP software, it is called "Adjusting Tone Curves" but DPP will default to the curve used by the camera. https://cam.start.canon/en/S002/manual/html/UG-04_EditImage_0040.html#EditImage_0060_3 

[nicolemeza94]

If you click the information icon on the picture it will show you the information on the picture. 

[p4pictures]

I went to your gallery again, and the info on the side is not enough detail to give you further guidance. I even selected the option to download an image, and what is downloaded is a processed JPG image with all the extended - useful - camera info removed. 

I opened the image I downloaded and used DPP to review the detailed camera info in the image and this is what I saw in the screenshot below. I also opened a RAW image of my own in DPP and used the same info panel to show the detailed settings and that is also shown below. The details in the original file is what is important. 

You can download Digital Photo Professional software (DPP) for Mac/Windows from Canon and check the info panel yourself for one of your images. It is also possible to show the location of the active AF point in DPP, this is not possible with the images in your gallery, but works for the actual RAW. Sharing a screenshot of the DPP file info panel from your images would be more helpful than the gallery images as they are.

[johnrmoyer]

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@nicolemeza94 wrote:

If you click the information icon on the picture it will show you the information on the picture. 

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I hope some of this might be helpful.

During download, Google photos converts the CR3 file to JPEG.

Google photos does a poor job of converting the CR3 to JPEG. Most of the metadata is discarded. The equivalent of Canon DPP "digital lens optimizer" is not done. I would expect this photo to look much better in the camera. For sharing on Google photos, the JPG from the camera would be better than the CR3. If you do not wish to use a computer, the camera can produce different JPG files from the same captured CR3 file: https://cam.start.canon/en/C011/manual/html/UG-07_Playback_0170.html and these would be higher quality for sharing with Google photos.

At F/10, there will be some small aperture diffraction blur. The camera will fix this using what Canon calls "digital lens optimizer". Canon DPP can also do "digital lens optimizer" when processing a CR3 file.  Rawtherapee free software would fix small aperture diffraction blur in what rawtherapee calls "capture sharpening".

[nicolemeza94]

Can you please let me know which pictures you think are sharp enough? I use lightroom and photoshop to edit my pictures. Everytime I come to check a picture I take from my camera, I zoom in the picture and if It looks pixelated or noisy and then I try to smooth the skin by reducing the noise on the picture and don't really like adding sharpness afterwards since I get the same issue. It doesn't look natural. I have taken other pictures in the past and when I take them with Flash, they seem to appear to have high definition and they were taken indoors. The pictures when I open them on the computer or try to send them to someone, it says they are too big, which I might think ok, the picture is good quality but in reality I'm experimenting an issue of it not being sharp/ detailed when zoomed in. The pictures that I sent through Google photos were taken by me using a tripod and I was using the SCN since it gives you the option to select what type of picture you are trying to take. Then, I go ahead and click on the screen so that I can set the focus point on my subject. Then for some reason after already setting the focus point on the subject, it seems to be a glitch or something, because again in my eyes the picture is not detailed once I zoomed in. I was so happy with the picture composition but after closely examining it, I became discourage since they are not as crisp and natural as I imagine it. I am in no way a professional photographer per say and I always wonder why there pictures look better. I always think that using a camera will do a better job then the iphone, but sometimes I feel like I'm better off with the iphone. Does it have to do anything with the lighting?