Soft Flowers

[thekevinmonster]

I recently purchased the 18-55mm kit lens that usually comes with my new Pentax K100D. I decided to go out and try my hand at some totally manual photography, and try out the lens. I found it surprisingly easy, although 'strenuous' compared to just setting to Av or P and snapping.

I got some nice pictures, and some frustrating ones. Here's a frustrating one:



The problem: soft.

You're probably going to have to click the link and go to the 'Original' size to see the whole story. When you shrink photos down, I've noticed, they often sharpen up nicely.

These flowers are soft. Are they soft because:

- I moved
- They moved
- I didn't focus on the flowers exactly
- My lens is soft and there is some glare/flare due to the lighting

????

(note: that photo is post-processed already. The original was shot in 'neutral tone' with '0' sharpening courtesy of my camera. I bumped the contrast up, cooled off the color a little, and added some sharpening in Lightroom)

[Dazyl]

thekevinmonster - couple of questions: was this hand-held or tripod? And were you using the camera's autofocus, or focusing manually?

What this looks like to me is just slightly off a sharp focus -- and it happens to me almost every time I go off the auto-focus.

[thekevinmonster]

It was hand-held. For taking pictures of flowers and stuff outside, I don't usually use a tripod. Mine's a bit too tall, and it's just daunting seeing all these flowers and thinking, "I have to adjust my tripod for every one. All down the block. And around the corner..."

As for focusing... boy, I don't remember. I didn't write it down! Unfortunately, that's not saved in the EXIF data for the image... doh.

Everyone always says, "use manual focus for closeup shots!".. but I may have gotten sick of doing it at that particular point in my rounds...

[clockdoc]

I don't think your problem is "softness" as much as it is lack of depth of field when shooting in the macro mode and at the telephoto focal length of your new lens. Is the 'wide-open' aperture at 50mm f/5.6? Your depth of field is going to be very small at any f/stop. You did well to minimize camera shake by using 1/500 sec. Auto focus can be very unpredictable and that is why I always try to shoot lots of images and hope that one will have in focus the main area I wanted. You may be too hard on yourself on this one.