crisp and clear pictures

[jimbo160]

   I am useing the EOS Rebel T3, and am haveing a lot of problems with makeing my pictures clear and crisp, as i think they should be. I have used numerous mode settings, and camera settings, but nothing has made my pictures clear and crisp. I have even sent the camera back to Canon to be checked out, and was told nothing wrong with the camera, so, it mus be me. I am going to try and send a couple of pictures for you to look at, and check what you can, to make a suggestion as to what i should do to make my pictures clear and crisp. Thanks for the help.....oops, after writing this, i do not see how to post a picture, so i will look for that now. Sorry.

                                                                                                                      Jimmy

[ColinGlover]

This could be one of several things. 1) Is the AF/MF switch on the lens set to AF to enable Auto Focus. If it is, you half press the shutter until you get a beep and one or more red lights in the viewfinder. If it's set to MF then switch it to AF. Auto focus depends on the AF system detecting differing contrasts so it can achieve focus, so if it's very low light, or everything's the same colour or hue you'll hear the lens motor whirring as it hunts to get focus. If it's a USM lens (silent motor) then you might not hear a whirring but will see the front of the lense rotate. If it's set to AF and there's no movement or whirring sound it's likely to be a faulty lens (see below). 2) Poor light or no contrast. See above. Also, you might need flash in low light situations. If you're shooting in Green Square mode it should pop up automatically, but in the other modes you need to pop it up by pressing the button to the left of the flash. 3) Faulty lens or body. Focus motors are in the lens so it's more likely to be a problem with the lens. Clean the the contacts on the lens and front of the body with a sparse thin coat of alcohol based cleaner. Rubbing alchohol is good or an alcohol based electrical cleaner. DO NOT get it inside the camera or lens. If still no joy, try another lense on your body. If it works it's your probably the lens at fault, if it doesn't it' could be the body. Try your lens on another body, and see if it works or not. That way you'll know if there's a problem. 4) Camera setting. Try resetting everything to default. If you are using manual mode, AV or TV, you need to understand how they work. Visit my own website http://www.point-n-shoot.co.uk/aperture-priority.php and http://www.point-n-shoot.co.uk/shutter--priority.php for simple explanations of AV and TV modes. This will help you. If you can't get the hang of M, TV or AV, use either the Green Square Auto mode, C+ Creative Auto mode, A-Dep or P modes to take the guesswork out of everything. See this thread http://forums.usa.canon.com/t5/EOS-Rebel/My-Rebel-T1-EOS-can-t-lock-focus/m-p/52663#U52663 for a better description of the possible causes. Let me know if this helps you. Cheers, Colin.

[jimbo160]

     I used the green square to take the pictures, and half pressed the button, til i got the green square on my screen. I did use auto focus. I also sent the body in for checkup, and was ok. It may very well be the lense. Finding use of another lense to try is not likely for me, but i can try. These kind of problems have been on hand for nearly a year now, and will probably go out and buy an inexpensive point and shoot. I will continue to look and try different things, as, i will go to the sites you mentioned, to further try and get clear and crisp pictures out of this thingt. Any more ideas would help me to know what to check on.

[ColinGlover]

If I were you. I'd look on Ebay or similar sites for used lenses. are you in the UK or USA? If in the UK, MPB photographic and London Camera exchange do used lenses cheaply. I've seen used lenses last week for £10.00 or $15.00 that were originally film Eos lenses that work perfectly with Canon digital EOS models. For less than the cost of a P/S model, you'll have have a working D-SLR.

[TCampbell]

There can be MANY reasons that an image is blurred -- even if focus was spot-on.

If, for example, your subject was moving but your shutter speed was low you can get motion blur.

If your subject was stationary, but you were hand-holding the camera with a slow shutter speed you can get blur caused by camera-shake.  And then of course there's the possibility that the focused distance to the subject was changing as you were shooting (e.g. a subject coming toward you) -- because in the default mode the camera only focuses until it achieves lock... then stops focusing and waits for you to fully press the shutter.  If the focused distance changes after that focus lock, then the focus will be still be back at the distance where the subject "used to be" but not where the subject is now.  And lastly... there's certainly the possibility that it never actually locked focus (and that can happen if the camera is in AI Servo mode which implies "release priority".)

If you can post an image or two, it'd help us recognize what is likely causing this issue for you.

When you reply, there's an icon just above the text input section... one of them will read "Insert/Edit Image" if you hover over the icon long enough for the tool-tip to pop up.  That icon is supposed to be a tiny tree -- but it's hard to see (at least it is for me).  It's just to the right of the icon that looks like a few links of chain.)  It will allow you to upload an image to include in your reply.

[jimbo160]

[jimbo160]

[ColinGlover]

They look acceptable to me Jimmy. What makes you think there's anything wrong? On an APS-C body viewed at 100% then images will look soft. Even the pixel density of a 7D will make it look soft @ 100%. Full frame cameras are much sharper. on the POTN forum I advised on a similar post, where in a couple of photo's ONE child looked ever so slightly out of focus, and the others were in. This Sovccer mum was worried, but the photo's were fine. Just as your photo's are. Most advertising shots use pemium L glas costing $,0000's or £,0000's. Don't worry, you're fine!

[TCampbell]

These appear to be acceptable with respect to "sharpness", but there are a few things you could do to impove.

As the saying goes "if your pictures aren't good enough, you aren't close enough."

A lens can be tested for it's detail resolving capability by shooting targets that have fine parallel lines of various thicknesses and various spacings between them.  A lens with excellent detail resolving capability will be able to resolve very fine lines with very narrow spacing between them (in other words you would be able to tell they are separate lines -- they will not appear to blur together.)  But this will change based on whether the target is in the center of frame vs. near an edge or corner.  It will also vary by f-stop.

But if you think about what that means.... the closer you are and the more your subject fills the frame, the more easily your lens will be able to resolve detail.

IF you are saving images to JPEG format, then you have some options on your camera as to how much sharpening you would like the camera to perform (in camera).  You can also apply sharpening using software.  But keep in mind, there are limits to just how much sharpening can be applied, apply too much can actually look worse than leaving it alone, and some subjects cannot be sharpened (basically if a subject is just slightly soft then sharpening usually works well.... if it's extremely soft then sharpening generally wont work.)

Also in image #2, you could slightly increase the warmth on the white balance, slightly increase the contrast, and slightly bump up the saturation.  You can do this on your computer, but the camera can also do it in-camera if you are shooting JPEG.  White balance can control the warmth (e.g. setting the white balance to "cloudy" will cause the camera to warm up the image) and you can use picture styles to apply in-camera saturation color adjustment, saturation, and also sharpening.  I recommend being subtle... it's like salting food -- a little improves it, but too much ruins it.

[laabrooks1998]

I am having this same issue on my T8.. I have watched videos on how to focus better and how to manually focus. I changed the image quality to large.. and I literally dont know what the issue is... It is super frustrating to get home and have it look nice via phone and you pull it up on a computer and it looks trashy..