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bud and sharpness

J

James Newman

Member
This is a bud that I picked out of a crowd of buds after a rain one afternoon. I took many shots of them, in groups, alone, with different lenses, but this particular one appealed to me more than the others. I see it as a sure sign of Spring here in Houston. It's not as sharp as I would like, and I have been working on that. I think maybe that's due to the lens and settings I used here. Nikon D40, 70-300mm AF-S VR, ISO 200, f/5.6 at 300mm. I used a tripod and wireless remote as well so either I just am not focusing correctly or the lens is my limiting factor. If this post would be better suited to the beginner section, please feel free.
James
bud.jpg
 
A

Aaron Strasburg

New member
Hi James,

The softness seems to fit. I have an old Sigma 28-70/2.8 that does some odd things near the minimum focus distance with which I've taken a few flower photos that turned out surprisingly well considering their softness.

I'm not familiar with your Nikon lens (sorry, stuck in the Canon camp...), but I'm guessing that f/5.6 is wide open? If so you may find that a single stop smaller aperture helps, but of course you'll give up some smoothness in the background. No free lunch, again. Mirror lockup might be helpful as well.

I like the echoes of the shape of the bud in the background. A nice image of spring.

Aaron
 
B

Bart_van_der_Wolf

pro member
James Newman said:
It's not as sharp as I would like, and I have been working on that. I think maybe that's due to the lens and settings I used here. Nikon D40, 70-300mm AF-S VR, ISO 200, f/5.6 at 300mm. I used a tripod and wireless remote as well so either I just am not focusing correctly or the lens is my limiting factor.
Click to expand...

The image at this size (was it downsized or is it a crop?) has hidden sharpness. It allows to be sharpened just fine, and then it looks ultra-realistic, almost popping out of the screen.

I don't know your postprocessing tools, but just ask if you need help with it (I'm a little low on webspace, otherwise I'd post the result based on the small JPEG). If you like I could PM the image to you so you can post it. Perhaps you'd prefer to have a larger version processed, just let me know.

Bart
 
nicolas claris

nicolas claris

OPF Co-founder/Administrator
Here's my take, Bart is fully right! (once more ,-)
I ran my action, layer at 100% (the LAB one) + another tour with smart sharpen at 125/0,5/0

bud_sharp.jpg
 
J

James Newman

Member
Wow. What a difference you have made with this image. Yes my photo was a crop. There was another piece of a bud showing that I really did not like. I've been doing some experimenting with the unsharpen mask in CS2 but I have not had the results like these. I will need to keep trying. Thank you for at least letting me know that there is sometimes more to an image than first meets my eye.
James Newman
 
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