Oh no, they're blurry!

[Ilyanep]

So I have this huge problem with camera focusing and blurriness in general, and it comes in multiple parts.

(I'm shooting with a Nikon D50 by the way).


1) When I'm setting down my camera on something and then I run into the frame while the timer is running, a lot of the times I don't have the focus set to the right distance (example below). How do you guys avoid this when taking self-portraits with tripods, etc.



2) My camera seems to have a lot more camera shake blur than I would think it would have. Even though I shoot with focal lengths 18-50 a lot of the time (my lens is 18-70) and with an ISO of 800 whenever I'm shooting indoors with artificial light and hand-held. [A few examples below] Any tips on how to fix this?

[I'm actually not sure that all of these are camera shake or if some of them are just focusing at the wrong distance :\]



3) Finally, when I try to fix these in Photoshop CS3, I usually end up with horrid results [examples below -- they're better than what came out of the camera but are still weird]. Any tips for good sharpening in Photoshop?






Thanks for all your help!

[Nicole]

Originally Posted by Ilyanep

1) When I'm setting down my camera on something and then I run into the frame while the timer is running, a lot of the times I don't have the focus set to the right distance (example below). How do you guys avoid this when taking self-portraits with tripods, etc.

I love this article for hints on how to get self-portraits in focus. Try some of their suggestions.

Originally Posted by Ilyanep

2) My camera seems to have a lot more camera shake blur than I would think it would have. Even though I shoot with focal lengths 18-50 a lot of the time (my lens is 18-70) and with an ISO of 800 whenever I'm shooting indoors with artificial light and hand-held. [A few examples below] Any tips on how to fix this?

I looked at the example you posted. The reason it's blurry is because your shutter speed is 1/3 s. Unless you're using a tripod (or something to stabilize your camera on) or really, really steady you're likely to get blurry shots. Oh yeah, and you have to be perfectly still in that time too So what you need to focus on is your shutter speed. Try to get your shutter speed at at least 1/focal length. So if you're shooting at 70mm, your shutter speed should be at least 1/80s. If you put your camera in S mode, you can set this.

Originally Posted by Ilyanep

3) Finally, when I try to fix these in Photoshop CS3, I usually end up with horrid results [examples below -- they're better than what came out of the camera but are still weird]. Any tips for good sharpening in Photoshop?

There are a lot of ways to sharpen in Photoshop. Unsharp mask works well if you can find some good settings (I recommend looking at the settings given in Scott Kelby's Photoshop for Photographer's book if you can get your hands on it). Actually that book has a lot of good information on sharpening. But there's also the high-pass method which gives good results a lot of the time. One tip is to remember to zoom in to 100% when you're sharpening so you can really see what's going on with your picture. That first one though looks overly smoothed to get rid of noise perhaps?

[curtiswheat]

1) Before I had a remote for my setup i would set something where i was going to be sitting, and focus on that. I then would place the camera in manual focus, and have a seat.

2) And with the focusing thing. What aperture are you using? If it is set to low, and you focus on the eyes or nose, by the time you get to the ears you can be out of focus.

[wulf]

As I suspect curtiswheat does, I love my remote. Small, cheap and a boon to self-portraiture. Without it, I used to stand in front of the camera to set the timer going - that saves a bit of time rushing round from the back. I also used to try and set markers that I could use to ensure I got in the right position. Above all, it involved a lot of trial and error - if less than 10% of your pictures come out right, you are still doing better than me (even with a remote I don't get near 10% once I take lighting, pose, framing, etc, into account).

Wulf