Professional photographer Jimmy Mcintyre mentions 15 ways of making sure your images turn out sharp.
We picked 7 of them – these tips will make a huge difference in the quality of your photos. Try and make a mental check list for these that you can return to whenever you’re taking pictures in challenging conditions.
Mirror lock up. When we take a photo, the mirror in our DSLRs slap up and down to let light into the sensor. This movement can shake the camera very slightly, which especially in longer exposures, can create a blurry image. Fortunately, if you’re already in Live View this will lock the mirror up during shooting (for most cameras, but not all). On some cameras, the mirror still slaps down when using Live View. In which case, visit the in-camera menu and look for the mirror lock up option.
Block wind. Windy weather can knock your tripod, leaving your images blurry. If possible, use your body to block in-coming wind.
Clean lens. Before and during every shoot, it is vital that we keep our lenses clean. Any dust or smudges can not only soften images, but can distort light and colors depending on the scene. Keep tissues handy. If you’d like to use a cleaning fluid, try to dilute the fluid with maybe 5 parts water and 1 part solution. Then spray the fluid on to the tissue and not the lens itself.
Get closer, and use a shorter focal length and lens. This tip is hit and miss. When we use longer focal lengths, every tiny camera shake can seem like an earthquake. The shorter the focal length, the weaker the impact of camera shake on our images. However, we all know that composition comes first in photography. By changing focal lengths, we may change our composition, which may not be desirable.
Don’t go too wide. Counter to the previous point, some wide angle lenses soften around the edges if we go too wide. It’s important to be aware of your lens’ performance. Some photographers manually focus closer to the edges rather than on central points, in order to avoid this.
Aperture. Most photographers seem to agree that shooting between f/5 and f/10 will produce the best results, regardless of lens. Smaller apertures (larger F number) can soften the image and cause diffraction. On the other hand, Large apertures will reduce your depth of field, leaving some parts less in focus than others.
Use sharpening tools. Photoshop has an array of very good sharpening tools, like Unsharp Mask and Smart Sharpen. Probably the best of these is High Pass Sharpen filter.
Read the full article over at 500px ISO.
Source: 500px ISO
Carson Branan