Proven Techniques for Sharper Photographs

sharpshooter

Martin bailey

table of contents
Introduction........................................................ 3 What Makes it Sharp?. . ........................................ 4 Where to Focus.................................................... 6 Focus in the Macro Range................................11 Advanced Focus Techniques............................ 14 The Great Un-sharp........................................... 19 Checking Critical Sharpness.. ......................... 23 Analyzing Blurriness . . ...................................... 24 Sharpening in Post............................................ 28 Conclusion......................................................... 35 Appendix.. ............................................................. 35

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introduction
Theres nothing worse than getting home thinking youve bagged a world-beater, only to look at your new prize on the computer and find that it isnt sharp. This eBook isnt going to transform every image you shoot into a razor-sharp wonder, but it will give you some tools to nail that world-beater more often than you lament it. Well look at depth of field and why things are sharp in the first place, and Ill cover various focusing techniques and settings. But its important to remember that theres no single right way to set up your camera and shoot the various scenes youll come across. Being a Sharp Shooter is about arming yourself with an understanding of why focus is what it is, learning the techniques required for each situation, and selecting the best method when the time comes. When I turned and saw these penguins coming towards me, I was shooting with the wrong settings for this scene. I didnt want to miss the shot, but they were going to be too close in a second or two. There was no time to change my settings, so the fastest and easiest way for me to focus without changing anything was to pre-focus on the ground in front of the penguins, and then release the shutter as the first penguin reached that point. It was a splitsecond decision based on practice and experience. The more you understand the techniques available to you, the more likely you are to reach for the right tool at the right time, even under pressure. Ill show you ways to figure out why a shot didnt work out and provide some tips on how to fix it. Well also experiment with using out-of-focus areas and intentional blur to great effect. In addition, if despite your best efforts you dont quite nail the focus on that dream shot, well look at what can be done on the computer so that you dont have to throw it out. Have fun, Sharp Shooter!

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what makes it sharp?

Depth of Field
Before we talk about techniques to get sharper images, lets work through some theory, to make sure we all understand why images are sharpor notin the first place. Im sure you already know that the aperture you set on your camera when shooting affects how much of the image will be in focus, and how much is not sharp, or soft. The depth of the sharp area is called the depth of field (commonly referred to as DOF). A wide aperture gives a shallow DOF with just a small part of the subject in focus, and a small aperture gives a deeper DOF, with much more of the scene in focus. To confuse matters, wide apertures are represented by small numbers such as 1.4, 2.8 and 4, and small apertures are represented by bigger numbers such as Aperture numbers are calculated by dividing the focal length of the lens by the width of the aperture, or the hole through which light travels through the lens. This means that the aperture of a 50mm lens at f/2.8 will be 17.86mm in diameter. Likewise, an aperture of f/4 on a 200mm lens will be 50mm in diameter. The range of aperture numbers in full stops is 1, 1.4, 2, 2.8, 4, 5.6, 8, 11, 16, 22, 32. These numbers are actually the square route of 2 to the power of 0, 1, 2 and so on, which is why theyre such weird numbers to remember.

Focus Distance and Focal Lengths Affect on Depth of Field

Lets look at some examples of how distance to subject and the focal length of your lens affect the DOF in your image. These calculations are commonly based on how sharp an image would look when printed at 8x10 inches and viewed from a distance of two to three feet. Perceived

To maintain the same DOF with the 100mm lens at f/5.6, youd have to double the distance to the subject by moving back to six feet (183cm). On the next page Ive provided a couple of examples of this (see Figure 1), with full-sized photos from both the 50mm and 100mm lenses on the left, and a 100 percent crop from each photo on the right. See how similar the bokeh is in both photos? If you were to go back to the 50mm lens while still shooting from six feet away, at the same aperture youd just over quadruple the DOF to 1.47ft (44.8cm). And for good measure, heres one last

16 and 22. This is because the pioneers of photography needed a numerical system to represent the size of the aperture in relation to any given focal length, such as 24mm, 50mm or 100mm, etc. The resulting apertures are written as f-numbers, like f/2.8, f/5.6 and f/11, etc.

sharpness will vary depending on how you eventually use an image, but these examples should help you to understand the theory.

If you arent familiar with how distance to subject, focal length and aperture affect depthof field, a DOF calculator can be a very useful learning tool. (See Appendix)
If you photograph a subject three feet (91.4cm) away with a 50mm lens and the aperture set to f/5.6, the DOF is approximately 4.24in (10.8cm). If you photograph the same subject from the same distance with the same aperture using a 100mm lens, the DOF decreases to a shade under an inch (2.53cm), just a quarter of the depth. See how doubling the focal length greatly decreases the DOF? example: if you want to shoot at three feet with a 100mm lens and still get a four-inch (10cm) DOF, you need an aperture four times smaller, taking you from f/5.6 through f/8, f/11 and f/16 to f/22. Remember how changing from 100mm to 50mm at six feet quadrupled the DOF? Its the same thing; its an inverse square, and this is why DOF is so shallow in macro photography (discussed later in this eBook).

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Figure 1

50mm @ f/5.6 from 3 (91.4cm) DoF = 4.24 (10.8cm)

100mm @ f/5.6 from 6 (183cm) DoF = 4.23 (10.7cm)

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where to focus

OK, so weve looked at how to control our depth of field, but where should we focus when composing an image?

Eyes (usually) Demand Focus

Generally, if there are people or animals in your shot, you will want to focus on your subjects eyes. Without the eyes in focus, the subject can look lifeless. In this shot of a clothes merchant in a market in India, I used an 85mm lens with the aperture set to f/1.6 for razor thin DOF on the gentlemans face only, particularly his wonderfully distinguished eyes. His nose and eyebrows are out of focus, but we dont care, or even notice, because his eyes are sharp. look to the little monkey. I stopped the aperture down to f/6.3 so that there was enough detail in the eye and face to make it still work.

Soft Eyes
As usual, guidelines are just that. There are always opportunities to break the rules, and having eyes not in focus is not always a total no-no. Tell a different story by not having focus on the eyes. For example, in this photograph I focused on the Snow Monkeys ear instead of the eye, resulting in the image being more about the texture of the fur, and to also give a distant, somewhat thoughtful

Find the Lines

Autofocus systems work by detecting lines and texture. If ever you are trying to focus on something and the lens starts to search, its often because you placed your selected focus point over an area that has no texture or lines. For example, focusing on a cheek is much more likely to give you trouble than the eye would.

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Foreground Bokeh (Maebokeh)

The Japanese word bokeh has been assimilated into the English language, much like sushi, tsunami and origami. Bokeh is the out-of-focus part of an image and can be used for effect in front of the main subject, as well as behind. A not-socommonly used Japanese word for this is maebokeh, which literally means front or foreground bokeh. Occasionally, finding something and purposefully composing your shot with it in the foregroundbut out of focuscan give a beautifully ethereal feel to your images,

like this photograph (Figure 2) of crowds on a bridge enjoying the cherry blossoms in Tokyo. I had the aperture of my lens wide open to make the foreground cherry blossom as out of focus as possible. I got the inspiration for this photo from an image shot by a good friend of mine, David Lee, but David shot his image more like this, (Figure 3) with the focus on the cherry blossom, rather than the people. I love both compositions, and which you choose is totally up to you. As photographers, considering which focus option to use for a particular scene broadens our creative horizons; there is usually more than one way to portray a scene or subject and still make a successful image.

Figure 2

Figure 3

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Hyperfocal Distance
Whereas shallow DOF is a great creative tool for the photographer, sometimes we want to see everything in focus. Rather than just stopping your aperture down as far as you dare and hoping for the best, you can use a calculated distance known as the hyperfocal distance to help you get mostif not allof the scene, from the foreground to infinity, in sharp focus. This is especially useful when shooting landscapes, for example, when we might want sharp focus throughout the image. Lets look at some examples of focal length and aperture combinations, and the resulting hyper-focal distances. If shooting with a 50mm lens at f/16, the hyperfocal distance is just over 17 feet (5 metres). The area of acceptable focus doesnt start from the point at which we focus; rather, thats the sharpest point. The focus extends about one-third in front of that point, and two-thirds back from it. When focused at the hyperfocal distance, the area in focus starts halfway between the camera and the point at which weve focused and continues to infinity. This means if we focus on a point 17 feet from the camera, everything from 8.6 feet (2.6 metres) to infinity will be in focus. Some lenses have a distance scale on them in a small window, which you can reference to set an approximate focus distance. We noted earlier that wide-angle lenses have deeper DOF, and this means our hyperfocal distance is also closer. So if using a 24mm lens at f/16, the hyperfocal distance is just four feet (1.2 metres). If we focus on this point, everything from two feet (0.6 metres) to infinity will be in focus. This is literally right in front of the lens, so you can appreciate how much DOF you can get with wide-angle lenses.

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Conversely, of course, this means that long telephoto lenses are not really suited for shooting using the hyperfocal distance. As shown here (Figure 4), at 200mm with an aperture of f/16, the hyperfocal distance is 274 feet (83 metres) with acceptable focus starting at 137 feet (42 metres), which is obviously not going to cut it if we want the foreground in focus. We can also see here that from around 50mm, getting mid-foreground in focus is pretty easy, and wide-angle lenses are great for getting everything in focus using the hyperfocal distance.

Figure 4

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Hyperfocal Guidelines
There are links to some hyperfocal distance calculators in the Appendix. They are great tools for learning about hyperfocal distance. Although I occasionally use mine in the field, once you have an idea of how your lenses and various focal lengths perform, you wont have to get out a calculator every time you want to shoot at the hyperfocal distance. I often just stop the lens down to between f/11 and f/14 and focus about one-third of the way into the scene. For very wide-angle lenses, I focus on the foreground and this is usually enough to give me good DOF in my images.

and smaller. Diffraction is what happens when light rays start to spread out as they pass through a small hole, which prevents the light from being focused to a small enough dot to create a sharp image. This means that even the areas that are within the depth of fieldand therefore supposed to be sharpactually become softer. Because of this, I like to give myself a soft limit of f/14, and try to avoid using f/16 or smaller when possible. There are tools such as Canons Digital Lens Optimizerwhich is built into Digital Photo Professional (DPP), the software distributed with Canon Digital SLR camerasthat actually do a very good job of removing diffraction caused by using small apertures. However, I have to have a serious problem to deal with before Ill use DPP , so generally I accept the slight softness if I absolutely have to go smaller than f/16.

Diffraction
In practice, I try to avoid stopping my lenses down past f/16. It varies from lens to lens, but most lenses start to suffer from diffraction with apertures around f/16

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focus in the macro range

Shallow Depth of Field in Macro

As we learned earlier, the closer we get to our subject, the shallower the depth of field gets, so lets look at some techniques for focusing in the macro range. For example, if you are going to shoot something at life-size* or closer, f/11 will only give you 4mm of DOF. Of course, shallow DOF is not necessarily something to avoid. This photo of a dandelion seed was shot at f/3.2 to ensure that only a part of the seed ball was in focus and that the background was totally blurred. As the subject gets closer, though, its usually best to stop down to around f/8 or f/11 to get a reasonable amount of focus.

Focus Stacking
Sometimes we want to see everything totally in focus, but cannot accomplish this by stopping down the aperture. In this case, I sometimes use a technique called focus stacking. This can be used for normal photographs such as landscapes, if you are using a long focal length, or for macro shots, both of which usually result in a shallow depth of field, even when stopped down some. Lets look at how to focus stack in the macro range.

* Life-size or 1:1 is the closest most macro lenses will enable you to photograph, and this basically means that an object 20mm wide would measure 20mm on your sensor. Perhaps easier to envision is a 35mm slide frame or negative. Imagine using a ruler to measure the subject on the piece of film. It would be 20mm across, which would be life-size or 1:1 in macro terms.

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Shooting for a Focus Stack

Focus stacking is the process of shooting multiple images, focusing on different points across the subject and stacking them together for a single image with deeper DOF. For macro stacking, I like to shoot at around f/11, as I did for this shot. Although well auto-align the images, if you handhold, you will likely move slightly as you shoot (especially in the macro range) so using a tripod is highly recommended. Also, if you are shooting outside, try to pick a calm day, so your subject isnt blowing around in the breeze. Set up your tripod and frame your subject for how you want your final image to look. Note that when you focus a macro lens you are actually going to zoom a little, even with a fixed focal length like a 100mm macro lens. Because of this, focus on the nearest part of your subject to begin with, and dont frame your subject too tightly. Youll need a little space as some of the edges will need to be trimmed away after aligning and stacking your images. Lock your exposure down, preferably shooting in manual exposure mode to avoid any shift in exposure, which will cause problems and need correcting before you proceed. If you have Live View on your camera it can help to use it, especially if you also have a live histogram. If you dont see your histogram in Live View, try hitting the Info button on the back of the camera until its displayed. Not all cameras have a Live Histogram and the button to turn it on can vary, so if it doesnt appear, check your manual. If necessary, take some test shots and adjust exposure using the histogram from these shots.

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Once you have your exposure where you want it, turn off the histogram (if shooting in Live View) and turn off auto-focus as you dont want the focus to jump around as you press the shutter button. Manually focus on the furthest part of your subject that you want to be in focus and expose your first frame. Then, trying not to move the camera, manually shift the focus a little closer and shoot another image. Continue this until you have moved the focus gradually across your subject, shooting a series of images for the entire subject or all of the parts that you want to be in sharp focus. Youll need to experiment a little to see how many frames you need for each subject, but you can usually see quite clearly as the focus advances. To get this image of a flower, I shot six frames.

Processing a Focus Stack

To process a focus stack, import the photos into your computer and open them in Photoshop as layers in a single image. If you are working in Lightroom, select all images for your stack, right click on one, select Edit In, and then select Open as Layers in Photoshop. If you want to open the images as layers from within Photoshop, select Edit > Automate > Photomerge , and then select your images from your hard drive. I find it better to turn off Blend Images Together in this dialog as it produces some strange results. Select Auto under the Layout menu, and then click OK.

If youve opened your images from Lightroom, ensure that all layers are selected, and then from the Edit menu select Auto-Align Layers and make sure Auto is selected under Projection . Whether you started from Lightroom or opened your files from within Photoshop, by the time youve reached this point, youll have something like the example image we see in Figure 5. Your layers will be open and selected in Photoshop, and probably have a little bit of transparent space around them from the alignment process. This will happen even if you used a tripod because of the slight change in perspective due to the zooming effect as you shifted focus.

Next, select Auto-Blend Layers from the Edit menu. Once auto-blending has run, check to make sure Photoshop has done a good job. You may need to jump in and change some of the masking that Photoshop did or you may need to reshoot your images with a smaller aperture or more incremental focus steps. In this sample image (Figure 6), I masked out the sharp stem of the flower, opting to leave it soft and out of focus. Once the masking looks good, the last step is to trim away any transparency or artefacts around the edge of the image to clean it up, and youre done!

Figure 5

Figure 6

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advanced focus techniques

Weve looked at what makes our images sharp, how to control both depth of field and bokeh for creative effect. There are times, however, when you need to apply slightly more advanced techniques to get a sharp shot, so lets take a look at these. For example, if the shutter button activates the autofocus, this means that you have to keep a focus point over your subject the entire time you are pressing the shutter button. If youre using One Shot (Canon) or Single Servo (Nikon), half-pressing the shutter button will lock the focus, and then as you recompose, you have to keep the button half-pressed the entire time. Using the back AF button allows you to focus, then release your thumb from the button to stop focusing, and that means you no longer have to worry about where the focus points fall in the frame as you recompose. Its like being able to toggle manual focus on and off in an instant. There are also times when the main subject that you want in focus is near to the edge of the frame and not covered by any of
Figure 7

very bottom of Figure 8. At times like that, if every time you half-press your shutter release button the focus snaps to something that you didnt intend to focus on, your only alternative is to switch your lens to manual focus mode.

need to locate the button and switch it over to AI Servo/Continuous-Servo really quickly, and by the time you were using continuous focus again the opportunity could be gone. Sure, there are ways to set buttons to toggle between AI Servo and One Shot, or Continuous and Single Servo AF, but even that isnt as fast as simply not pressing a button to go to manual AF, pressing and then releasing that button for the equivalent of One Shot/Single Servo, or pressing and holding that same button for continuous focus. You basically have access to all three AF modes without changing a thing.
Figure 8

Possibly the biggest benefit of back button focus is that you can leave your camera in AI some getting used to, there are some major benefits to using the back AF button. Servo (Canon) or Continuous Focus (Nikon) mode, to get the best of all three modes. For example, if you suddenly needed to focus on a fast-moving subject and youd switched to One Shot/Single Servo, youd

Back Button Focus

Many sports and wildlife photographers disable focusing with the shutter button in the custom settings and use the AF button (see Figure 7) on the back of the camera to focus. This can sound like a pretty wacky thing to do at first, and although it takes

your focus points, like the leaves at the

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Center, Manually Selected, or All Focus Points

Whether your camera has 9 or 61 focus points, you choose which to focus with. Many people favour the center focus point, because its often the most accurate and simply because its in the middle. Also, using all of your focus points with automatic selection can lead to the camera focusing on the wrong part of the scene. Another option is to either use just one or a small group of focus points, but select something other than the central group. Lets explore when and why you might use these various methods. on your lens and make it easier to keep your focus point over your subject.

Manually Selected Focus Point

The problem with focusing with the center focus point and then recomposing your shot is that the plane of focus shifts as you recompose. Looking at this example image, imagine that you were photographing a person from the waist up with a 50mm f/1.4 lens, which has just one centimeter of depth of field when used wide open. You can see here that you might initially move the camera upwards and focus on the eye (signified by the green line), but as you move the camera down and reduce the space above your subjects head, the focus that should have been over the left eye is now closer to the right, as shown by the blue line. That may not seem like a big shift, but in Figure 9 I rotated the camera on its sensor plane, which is close to the back of the camera. In reality, you are more likely to move the camera forward and perhaps down a little on an arc, creating a difference more like Figure 10, where the shift is the difference between having the face sharp or not. This second example was photographed by moving the camera on the ball head without moving the tripod. This is the actual amount of shift.
Figure 10 Figure 9

Center Focus Point

When shooting with a reasonably deep depth of field, or when your subject is far away, using the center focus point is good for quick and accurate focusing. Its also much easier to focus using the center focus or a selected focus pointrather than the entire range of focus pointswhen there is a lot of texture in the background or objects in the foreground. Autofocus systems generally look for contrasting lines and textures, and will often jump to these things more readily than your intended subject. Selecting your focus point enables you to tell the camera exactly where you want it to focus. Note that if you are shooting with a long telephoto lensespecially if you are using the back AF button to focushalf-pressing your shutter button will activate the image stabilization

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When shooting at a relatively close distance with a very wide aperture, its better to select a focus point closest to the eye, or a specific part of the scene on which you want to focus to avoid this kind of focusing error.

there is a lot of texture or contrast in the background, the camera can lose focus on your subject, often at a critical moment. That being said, cameras are getting better, and we can tweak the settings to make focusing more accurate. You will need different settings for different subjects and scenes, but as an example, for fast-paced bird photography over high contrast backgrounds, I set my cameras Tracking Sensitivity to -1, Acceleration/deceleration Tracking to +1 and AF Point auto switching to +1 (see Figure 12). I add these three options to My Menu so that I can access and tweak them quickly in the field; I rarely go back to the preset scenes.

Moving Subjects Automatic Focus Point Selection Although automatic selection using all of your focus points is available in One Shot (Canon) or Single Servo (Nikon) focusing modes, I rarely use it in these modes because its too prone to error, often jumping to higher contrast objects in the frame. However, I do make good use of automatic selection from all focus points when using AI Servo (Canon) or Continuous Servo (Nikon) focusing mode. When using continuous focus, most cameras use a single focus pointoften selectableto gain initial focus, and then automatically switch to using all focus points to track the subject around the frame. This allows you to recompose your photo or track a fastmoving subject more easily once you have locked your initial focus on your subject. Its great for tracking birds in flight or focusing on a subject like a soccer player darting around the pitch. Continuous focus works best when the
Figure 11

Figure 12

Continuous focus works better if you have time to stay locked on your subject, to allow the camera time to refine the focus. In the photo on the next page (Figure 13), I stayed with a Stellers Sea Eagle from way up in the sky, staying locked on as it darted downwards and then I fired off

subject is over a plain background. When

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Figure 13

nine frames as the eagle levelled out just above the water and swooped across the surface, catching a fish in his talons. The first and last frames of the series were slightly soft, as the camera learned the direction and speed of the subject, but the seven frames in the middle of the series were all tack sharp. The sea ice in the background is good at stealing focus, but with my selected settingsbased on a lot of bird photography over high contrast backgroundsIm pretty happy with how the focus system stayed locked on the subject.

Steadying Super Telephoto Lenses

If you shoot with super telephoto lenses, like a 400mm f/2.8 or a 500 or 600mm f/4, these beasts are so big that you can often get vibration in the lens caused simply by the action of the mirror jumping up and down as you release the shutter, and even sometimes caused by the shutter itself opening and closing. The best way to get sharp images with these long lenses is to shoot with a fast enough shutter speed to beat the shuddering of the lens (approximately 1/320 of a second and higher).

If you are shooting when there isnt much light (such as dawn or dusk), and your ISO is cranked up as high as you dare, youll need to start taking extra precautions as your shutter speeds drop to 1/250 of a second or lower. All super telephoto lenses have tripod feet on them, and you can reduce lens shudder by wrapping your left hand around the tripod foot, with your small finger, ring finger and middle finger around the foot, then push up against the barrel of the lens with your thumb and index finger (see Figure 14). This usually puts your fingers against the focus ring of the lens as well,

so you can manually tweak focus in this position if needed. Another way to apply pressure to reduce lens shudder is to lay your left arm over the top of the lens (see Figure 15). This also puts your hand over the focus ring for manual tweaking, and is easier to do for long periods of time than the previous method. Whether you are applying pressure from below or above the lens, you can also push your face against the back of the camera as you look through the viewfinder. This helps to remove any play between the camera and the lens.

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A third way I apply pressure to stop lens shudder is a method that bird photography legend Arthur Morris taught me in an email exchange (and an eBook sale) a number of years ago. When using a long lens and going really slow (under 1/100 of a second), using a gimbal setup such as the Wimberley Head, push up at the elbow, applying pressure to the swing arm knob while pushing down on the lens with your hand (see Figure 16). Pulling the camera down with your right hand and pushing your face against the back can really help to steady a long lens with slower shutter speeds. Another option to support the lens and reduce shudder is the Really Right Stuff Long Lens Support Package (see Figure 17). I sometimes combine the third technique above with this setup when shooting in very low light. Which side you place the arm of a gimbal head depends on the method you use to reduce shudder. If you dont use the third method with the elbow under the knob, you might find it easier to have the gimbal arm to the right of the camera, so that you can get your left arm up and over the lens unencumbered.
Figure 14 Figure 16

Figure 15

Figure 17

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the great un-sharp

Good photographs arent always about having everything perfectly sharp. In fact, images with only a small part of them sharp are often more aesthetically pleasing, as they lead the eye directly to the intended subject, and the dreamy bokeh or intentionally blurred areas become supporting actors. Here are some ways to create intentionally blurred areas in your images.

Wide Apertures
As shown previously, wide apertures provide a shallow depth of field, which can give a beautiful ethereal feel to our images. I love looking for patches of flowers with a pleasing background and shooting them with a long lens and a wide-open aperture, like this Flowerscape of equinox flowers shot at 150mm with the aperture set to f/2.8. Just because the background and foreground are out of focus, it doesnt mean that you just accept where the elements fall; I take great care to find the right camera angle and height so that the background elements enhance the image.

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Panning
Panning to make your main subject sharp with a blurry background is a very effective technique, but the faster and more erratic your subjects movement, the more difficult it can be to get them sharp. If you can accept that youre going to have a low success rateeven when you get good at itthis technique is a lot of fun. With longer focal lengths and a fastmoving subject, you need a faster shutter speed; however, the goal is to move the camera fast enough to blur the background, and the more you can blur it, the better the results will be.

For example, when photographing birds, you will most likely want to capture a bit of wing movement while getting the head as sharp as possible. When shooting a subject like this Stellers Sea Eagle, youll need a shutter speed of around 1/100 to 1/125 of a second. For slower moving objects or things further away, youll be able to go slower, down to around 1/50, or even 1/25 of a second. To get a slow shutter speed in full sunlight, you might need to use a small aperture such as f/11 or f/16. Theres no need to worry about your depth of field being too deep because everything that isnt moving with your pan will be blurred anyway.

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The most successful panning shots are when the subject you are following is crisply sharp, but if theyre a little soft dont worry about it too much. If the results are pleasing to look at, youve done a good job.

Figure 18

Panning Technique
The best panning technique Ive found is to stand with your feet shoulder width apart, point your body slightly toward where you think the pan will end, wind yourself back like a spring (toward the start of the panning action) and then rotate from the waist while unwinding. This gives you a very smooth panning action and, although youll lose shots, youll have a good chance of getting one or two that really work. Youll also need to have your camera set in AI Servo (Canon) or Continuous Focus (Nikon), so that you can continue to focus on the subject as they move towards or away from you. trees in the snow, which was used as the and release the shutter as the bottom of the trees comes into frame. You dont necessarily have to include the bottom of the trees, but I find it more pleasing to do To get an image like this (Figure 18), youll need a shutter speed between 1/10 and 1/30 of a second and use as small an aperture as necessary to stop the image from over-exposing. You may even need to use a neutral density filter in bright conditions. Then move the camera down Note that you need to ensure that you pan perfectly with the vertical lines. If you start to move diagonally, the blur will be less pleasing, even messy. I usually hand hold for this sort of shot, but if you have a tilt-pan so, especially with a snow scene like this. You can use this technique with fields of flowers or grasses, for buildings or a crowded street. You might also try rotating your camera or zooming while making the exposure. Experiment with these techniques and see what you come up with. style tripod head, you can lock down the horizontal axis and use the vertical axis for a pan like this, or vice versa for a horizontal pan. cover of issue two of the Craft & Vision digital magazine,
PHOTOGRAPH.

Intentional Movement Blur

In contrast to tack-sharp images, some scenes can actually work very well by intentionally moving the camera while photographing a static scene, blurring everything! I used this technique for this photograph of a simple copse of birch

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Long Exposures
Long exposures are a great way to allow the moving elements of a scene, such as water and clouds, to blur into areas of beautiful smooth softness. For long exposure shots, youll need to invest in a sturdy tripod. Without a good tripod, even the tiniest bit of wind or vibration will result in camera shudder. I use a mix of Really Right Stuff and Gitzo tripods, all of which are tall enough to get the cameras viewfinder to eye level or higher without having to stoop. They also have thick leg sections for utmost rigidity.

Although I use the Wimberley Head gimbal to aid tracking when using my super telephoto lens, for everything else I use the Really Right Stuff BH-55 ball head or the BH-40 when Im traveling and weight is an issue. Both are as rigid as can be and, in my opinion, the best ball heads on the market. Use mirror lockup to get the mirror mechanism up and out of the way before the exposure starts, but if you are using some of the latest Live View cameras, Live View pretty much equals mirror lockup. You also need to get your hands

away from the camera well before the exposure starts. A cable release is a good tool for long exposures, but wrap it around something to stop it from dangling if possible. Even with a sturdy tripod, a dangling cable release can bang against a tripod leg and introduce vibration, especially when windy. If you dont have a cable release or some kind of remote release, use your cameras two-second timer and trip the shutter with your finger, then move your hand away from the camera immediately as the timer starts.

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checking critical sharpness

After youve shot your images and transferred them to your computer, youre now ready to edit your selection down to just your best shots. If you are only shooting for the web, you can simply browse through your images and, if they look good on the screen, youre good to go. But if you want to do any printing, submit your images to a stock photo agency or enter them into competitions, etc., you really should check for critical sharpness before you take any photo through your post-processing workflow. At what point you do this is up to you, but Im a big believer in checking for critical sharpness early because I like to weed out flawed images before I invest much time and emotional energy on them. Generally, my first pass through my images is to look for images that I Once I have starred all of my likes, I do a second pass and try to reduce the number of selects by comparing finer I usually give my initial selects four stars to give me leeway to promote or demote images and filter them out of my current view in Lightroom. You can do the same in Bridge, Aperture and most other image browsing software. Which rating system you use is a matter of personal preference; Im just explaining a few elements of my workflow to make it easier to follow the process. In my opinion, zooming to 50 percent is not enough to really assess critical sharpness unless you know that you never want to produce large prints or sell your images. They dont necessarily

like based on composition and artistic merit. I use star ratings to mark what I like, and at this point I also hit the X key in Lightroom to reject technically flawed images or those that make me wonder what I was thinking when I shot it.

compositional nuances and checking the critical sharpness of the images. I might start to gravitate towards one image over the others because of a slight compositional difference, but before I allow myself to get too attached to that image, I zoom in to 100 percent to check that it is sharp where I intended it to be. Some people recommend zooming to 50 percent and others recommend 200 percent. With the new Mac Retina screens, it can sometimes be necessary to zoom past 100 percent depending on your screen settings, but most of the time, 100 percent is enough for me.

have to be totally tack sharp (later well look at what to do when you dont quite nail the focus), but when you have a choice from multiple images, its better to initially spend time and select the sharpest of the batch, rather than have to go back to your original files and search for an alternative later. The dilemma begins when you have one image that is compositionally better than another, but less sharp. A decision must be made as to whether or not the less sharp image is sharp enough and can be savedby the techniques covered later in this eBookor the sharper image is compositionally good enough to be the one.

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analyzing blurriness
necessary. It also helps to tuck your elbows into your sides, and if you know that you are pushing it a bit on the shutter speed, find something solid to lean on the shutter button. Most people find the best way to support the camera is to cup your left hand under the lens, palm facing upwards, with your fingers wrapped around the barrel of the lens. This also enables you to adjust the zoom ring or manually tweak the focus when You might also need a faster shutter speed to eliminate camera shake. To recap on a well-known guideline, the golden rule regarding the slowest shutter speeds for hand-held shooting is to use the focal length at which you are shooting as the shutter speed. For example, if you are shooting against, like a tree or a wall. stabilization. This means that if you have three stops of stabilization, you could most likely get away with a shutter speed as low as 1/25 of a second at 200mm. The problem with going this slow is that you may start to see blur because of subject movement, so I generally try to use the focallength-as-shutter-speed rule as a base measurement, regardless of whether or not Im using image stabilization. There are a number of reasons that images might end up blurred or soft; to enable you to fix the problem, you need to investigate the cause. Blur is typically caused by camera shake, subject movement, focus error or a combination of the three. Lets examine a few ways to tell the difference, and Ill give you some tips on how to overcome these issues in addition to the techniques weve already covered.

I only rely on Image Stabilization once light levels drop so low that I cant push my ISO any higher.
Of course, an alternative to hand-holding is to use a tripod, and so long as you buy something sturdy enough to hold your gear and withstand a bit of wind, that will certainly help in most cases. But since tripods arent always available or practical, its still useful to learn good hand-held shooting techniques.

Camera Shake
If everything in your image is blurred, including foreground and background objects, it most likely means that your camera moved during the exposure. To reduce the risk of camera shake, ensure that you are supporting your camera properly when hand holding. If you are shooting with an SLR camera, hold the grip with your right hand and your finger
Figure 19

with a 50mm lens, use a shutter speed of 1/50 of a second or faster to avoid camera shake. If you are shooting at 200mm, you will want a shutter speed of 1/200 of a second or higher; the longer the focal length, the faster your shutter speed needs to be. Image Stabilization (Canon) or Vibration Reduction (Nikon) can also help by providing two or more stops of

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Subject Movement
Upon inspection of a blurry image, if you can see that some parts of the image are sharp (like the ground around a subjects feet) but your main subject is blurry, it may be unwanted subject movement. To overcome this, increase the shutter speed. How you achieve a faster shutter speed will depend on your chosen shooting mode, but you will generally need to select a higher ISO to make your sensor more sensitive, a wider aperture to let in more light, or a combination of the two. How fast you need to take your shutter speed will depend on the subject, but to freeze the motion of a child running around a lawn, youll probably want 1/500 of a second or faster. The freeze a large bird in flight, youll want between 1/800 to 1/1250, and for smaller birds or fast paced sports, you may need as high as 1/2000 of a second or faster.

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Focus Errors
When looking at a blurred subject, if you can see something in the foreground or background that is sharp, chances are you missed the focus. This is a common problem when shooting with a shallow depth of field. Using a smaller aperture will help to get more of the subject sharp, but assuming you want to have fun with shallow depth of field, lets think about what we can do to reduce our focus errors. Weve already looked at the various focus modes (so I wont go into detail on this), but when shooting a relatively stationary subject with a wide aperture, select One Shot on a Canon or Single Servo mode on a Nikon camera. This locks the focus when focus is achieved and keeps it there as long as you half-press the shutter button or while you hold the back AF button if you use the back AF button to focus. As previously

mentioned, if you are using the back AF button, you might choose to stay in AI Servo or Continuous Servo and just take your finger off the button to stop focusing. Another useful technique for landscape and still life photography is, when using a tripod, to use Live View and then zoom in to 5X or 10X on the cameras LCD and manually adjust the focus (see Figure 20). Zooming in Live View is generally activated using the same buttons that you use to zoom in on a photo during playback, but it also works in Live View on most cameras that Ive come across in recent years. This is a great way to adjust focus for static subjects, but doesnt make much sense for hand-held shooting or for moving subjects.
Figure 20

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Another common focusing problem is accidentally focusing on the wrong part of your subject, such as the eyelashes of this snow monkey. To overcome this, I focused manually instead of relying on the cameras focusing system. There are times when its just easier to take full control. To successfully use manual focus, you need to be able to clearly see your subject. I know this sounds silly, but you wouldnt believe the number of people Ive met who arent aware of the diopter on their camera. The diopter is a small adjustment dial next to the viewfinder that allows you to adjust the viewfinder sharpness to match your eyesight. Check where this is on your camera and ensure its set to enable you to see through your finder as clearly as possible. If the range of the diopter is not great enough to match your eyesight, you can even buy viewfinder eyepieces with fitted dioptric lenses from your camera manufacturer.

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sharpening in post
Once youve done all you can in camera and selected the best of the bunch, what can you do with a photograph thats not quite critically sharp, but its so close you dont want to throw it out?

Saving the Almost There Shots

Sometimes, you get so close that not being quite perfect is not a good enough reason to throw something out. Here are a few tricks you can use to save the ones that almost got away.

Selective Sharpening
I love this photograph of a Japanese White Eye bird surrounded by the early flowering Kanzakura cherry blossoms, but truth be told, I didnt quite nail the focus on the birds eye. To give me that beautiful dreamy background, I shot this at f/4 at 420mm, so the DOF is razor thin. When viewed at 100 percent, you can see that the focus is about 5mm behind the eye. Theres a line of sharpness on the birds body, just in front of its legs.

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I could argue that this is the best place to have the focus at this aperture, otherwise the shape of the bird would have been slightly less defined, but excuses aside, a wildlife shot usually doesnt work if the eyes arent acceptably sharp. Because I didnt want to just throw this out, I used the Adjustment Brush <K> in Lightroom to paint in some sharpness. I didnt want to sharpen the entire image as I wanted the soft parts to remain nice and dreamy. They wouldnt sharpen up much, but I wanted it as dreamy as possible. As shown in Figure 21, I painted

a relatively rough area over the bird and turned the sharpness up to 100. The amount of sharpness you need will depend upon the sharpness of the original photograph. If you go too crazy with Sharpness, it can look digitized and pixelated, so adjust to taste. I often take a slider way up, then pull it back to where I think it looks good, but for this photo, it didnt look over-sharpened even at 100, so I left it there. By the way, the resulting image has been licensed a few times by Popular

Photography Magazine, so Im pleased I didnt throw it out.

shot where I missed focus on the eye, I needed quite heavy settings to get the eye sharp.

Localized Sharpening in Photoshop

As much as I love Lightroom, when I need very detailed sharpening, I do it in Photoshop. My sharpening filter of choice is Smart Sharpen , found under the Filter > Sharpen menu. The amount of sharpening required depends on the amount of softness you are dealing with. For my White-Eye

Having set the Remove pull-down menu to Lens Blur and clicking the More Accurate checkbox, I selected an Amount of 100 percent and a Radius of 2.3 px. The problem with going this heavy on the sharpening is that it can create halos around the edges, as seen here in the Smart Sharpen Preview window (Figure 22). Both the edge around the bird and the pink cherry blossoms look pretty nasty here. An easy way to apply sharpening to only the parts of the image that need it is to use a layer mask.

Figure 21

Figure 22

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Select the photograph in the Layers pallet (see Figure 23), and select Duplicate Layer from the Layer menu. If the new layer isnt selected, select it, and then apply your Smart Sharpen filter to this duplicate layer. Then while holding down the Alt key on your keyboard, click the Add Layer Mask button at the bottom of the Layer Pallet (circled in red here). Holding
Figure 23

down the Alt key automatically fills the Mask layer with black, and remember: black conceals, white reveals. This is how I remember to use black to hide whatever is below that part of the mask, and white to allow the effect to show through. Select the mask and, with the Brush tool selected (circled on the left), set the size big enough to paint over the areas you want to show the sharpening effect on with pure white (see Figure 24). Use a big brush to paint in the bulk of the area, and then reduce the size of the brush to refine the edges as necessary. The bracket keys ( [ and ] ) on your keyboard change the brush size. If you paint too far over the edges, ensure your background color is black, and hit the X key on your keyboard to toggle between the background and foreground colors. Paint over the unwanted areas with black to hide them again. You should see your sharpened areas as white in the mask (circled to the right).

Figure 24

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Other Sharpening Tools

Another way to sharpen images is Nik Softwares Sharpener Pro 3, RAW Presharpener (see Figure 25). For me, Lightroom is often enough, or Photoshop for fine detail sharpening, but I do like the visual clues as to exactly what is being sharpened in Sharpener Pro. Just like the other Nik Software plug-ins, Sharpener Pro Presharpener uses Control Points, so in addition to generic global sharpening, you can apply varying degrees of sharpness applied to very specific tonal ranges. The sharpening effect only works on similar tones to those on which you drop a Control Point. You can vary the size and percentage of the sharpening individually applied to each control point, and use minus Control Points to remove the effect from areas that you didnt want to sharpen. In this screenshot, I have turned on the Effect Mask, to show which parts of the image are being sharpened. There is also an Effect Overlay, which looks similar to Lightrooms local adjustment display, but with greater detail.
Figure 25

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Sharpening for Print

In Lightroom
No matter how sharp they may be, all photographs have to be sharpened for print regardless of any sharpening that you do to the image in your usual workflow. Lightroom makes the sharpening-for-print process extremely easy; all you need to do is to select the type of paper in the Print Job panel.

There are two options: Glossy and Matte. If you are printing on lustre or satin paper, Glossy will work just fine. Standard usually gives plenty of sharpening, unless you are printing large. If you print from a low resolution file or youre printing larger than 17 x 24 , Lightroom sharpening may need to be turned up to High, especially for matte papers, because the ink spreads a little on matte papers so they need more sharpening.

My usual approach is to use Lightroom sharpening if I have 200ppi (pixels per inch) or higher. To see how much resolution your image has to print with, turn on Show Guides in the Guides panel and ensure Dimensions is checked. Uncheck Print Resolution in the panel so your print resolution is displayed in the top left corner of your image (see Figure 26). If it is lower than 300ppi but more than 200ppi, click the Print Resolution checkbox and type in 300. This makes Lightroom res-up the image for printing. Later on well look at what to do if your image resolution is below 200ppi.

Youll need to adjust the Amount and Radius sliders to get the image to the point where it starts to look slightly oversharpened. An amount of 80 percent and a radius of 1.0px is a good place to start, but it will depend on how sharp your base image is and the kind and size of paper you are printing on; youll need to experiment to get optimal sharpness. You can then save presets of your Smart Sharpen settings and for various types of paper and print sizes, in order to remember what settings you used. Note that you only need to sharpen this much for print, so dont apply this sharpening and then save your original images. Save a copy, and name it in such a way that you can tell it was for a gloss or matte print and include the print size and other relevant information.

In Photoshop
If I need to sharpen for print in Photoshop, I use Smart Sharpen (see Figure 27). Select Smart Sharpen from the Filter > Sharpen menu and ensure the Preview checkbox is selected so you can see the effects on the image in the preview window, and then select Lens Blur from the Remove pull-down menu and click the More Accurate checkbox
Figure 26

at the bottom of the dialog box.

Figure 27

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Figure 30

Enlarging for Print

If printing at 24 x 36 or larger or printing a heavily cropped or otherwise low-resolution image, you will probably need to enlarge and sharpen your image specifically for print. When I need to enlarge an image like this, I use onOne Softwares Perfect Resize 7.5.

first came out, it defaulted to 8 bit, which is going to crush fine gradations in your photos and should be avoided whenever possible. Although most printers will print at 600ppi or higher, I usually only enlarge to 300ppi. The difference in printing with higher resolution is unnoticeable with the naked eye, so the additional files size and processing time isnt really worth it. If you are going to print without borders, to enlarge your image to a given size, just select a size from one of the Perfect Resize Presets or type in your required size into the Width and Height fields (see Figure 29). I generally print with borders around my images, so I enter the exact size that I need the enlarge to 20.8 x 31.2 inches to accommodate my chosen border sizes. I explain how I calculate these border sizes in my Craft & Vision eBook, Making the Print. I also have a spreadsheet that calculates the size of the borders and image cells that you can download from my blog. I leave most of the options in the Settings panel at their defaults and use Genuine Fractals as the Method; this seems to give more pleasing results. I often just leave the Image Type at General Purpose, but if you are printing a portrait, the Portrait preset might work better. Since all of the presets are simply
Figure 29

to a part of the image at 100 percent and make a few adjustments to see how it affects the image (see Figure 30). If Im preparing to print on a gloss paper, I usually leave the Type set to Unsharp Mask in the Sharpening panel. Matte paper usually requires more sharpening than gloss, but I jump between Unsharp Mask and Progressive . Progressive gives nearly oversharpened results, but thats usually what you need for matte paper. If Im printing for a gallery wrap and dont want to do any further sharpening before I print, by default I use Progressive as I think it looks better on a highly-textured canvas surface.

Figure 28

image to be in the image cell in Lightroom. For example, for a 24 x 36 print, I need to

Once installed, launch Perfect Resize 7.5 in Lightroom by selecting it from Plug-in Extras under the File menu. In Photoshop, youll find it under the File > Automate menu. When using Perfect Resize for the first time, I recommend you open Preferences and ensure that Bit Depth is set to 16 bit and that Resolution is set to 300 pixels/ inch (see Figure 28). The reason I call this out is because when Perfect Resize 7.5

slider adjustments, its a good idea to zoom in

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Note that at the time of writing Making the Print, I used Nik Softwares Sharpener Pro before printing large prints. With Perfect Resize 7.5, Im finding that including Progressive Sharpening as part of the blow-up process is usually as aggressive as I need to go. When Ive sharpened the image when increasing resolution (even if I print from Lightroom), I usually turn Lightroom sharpening off until Ive printed a small part of the image as a test. If necessary, I turn it back on, but usually the external sharpening Ive done is enough. As seen in the Pixel Dimensions panel, this image will be almost doubled from an uncropped 18 megapixel file enlarged by 183 percentfor printing at 24 x 36 with a border. Ive also printed 10 megapixel photos cropped down to a 1:2 panorama as large as 24 x 48 and they still look great after enlarging for print using onOne Softwares Perfect Resize.

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conclusion
Weve worked through why our camera and lens decisions make our photographs sharpor notand how to control depth of field for creative effect. Weve looked at techniques for focusing on tricky subjects, and holding or supporting our cameras for sharp images. Our cameras are getting better with every generation, but even with the latest and greatest camera body, you wont nail focus on every shot. Its always going to be challenging; thats why its so satisfying when we come home with an image so sharp that it makes the hair on the back of your head stand up! Dont be afraid to pixel peep. Anti-peepers are often just defending their decision to live with soft shots or not spend the time necessary to check. Im not saying that you should throw out everything that isnt totally sharp, but with sharp-shooting techniques you can be better. Shoot with quality in mind, and use the post-processing techniques discussed here when you got close, but no cigar. There are also times when we live with the soft image despite hoping wed done better. Its an individual decision and thats fine, but dont just sweep it aside as pixel peeping, or give yourself permission to be mediocre and to stop trying to improve your craft. Enjoy your photography, and be the best that you can.

appendix
Links
Camera Supports
Really Right Stuff: www.reallyrightstuff.com Gitzo Tripods: www.gitzo.com Wimberley: www.tripodhead.com

Software
Nik Software: www.niksoftware.com onOne Software: www.ononesoftware.com

Depth of Field Calculators

My favourite DOF Calculator is in my iPhone app: http://mbp.ac/app Theres also a great online calculator here: http://mbp.ac/dof

Martins Web Site

I also encourage you to visit my Blog and listen to my Podcast, as I share information weekly when Im not traveling. See you there! www.martinbaileyphotography.com

Martin Bailey Tokyo, 2013

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