why is this blurry?

[sybren]

Be sure to fix your exposure as well, stock photos don't sell well on a grey background ;-)

[EmmaR]

yep, will do. wasn't concentrating on that kinda stuff for these shots as you can tell by the bottom of the photo!

But yes, I worked out last night that I really need a light meter for this kinda thing, or increase the exposure cause the in camera meter picks up the white background...

thanks again!

[sybren]

You don't need a light meter for this kind of stuff. Just don't expect the in-camera meter to register as "neutral" when you're not shooting something neutral. Just set the exposure compensation to +1 or +2 stops and check your histogram.

[EmmaR]

ok, so I've done all the above, and here is the latest shot - in my opinion it's still blurry.

any thoughts?

[sybren]

It would seem that you're still not posting the full version. The photo you posted has been edited with Adobe Photoshop Elements 7.0 for Windows. I also don't think that a 1000D produces images as small as 1037x1556 pixels. Just post the CR2 file here, and we can take a really good look at what's happening.

Did you know that digital images are inherently a bit vague, and that your camera applies some sharpening when shooting JPEG? When shooting in RAW (as you seem to be doing, judging from the meta-data in the image) you have to apply some sharpening yourself.

[EmmaR]

to attach a file to this message, it needs to be under 734kb hence the reason why it is so small. If I can get the original image - approx 4 mb on here I would.

And alamy requires absolutely no sharpening to any images.

The ones I have posted have just the in camera sharpening, but I have tested with no sharpening and in camera sharpening

[EmmaR]

ok, so I've uploaded it to my website. be warned - it's a large file so it takes a while to view on the screen

www.emmarhoades.com/images/bear.jpg

[sybren]

Ah, now we're talking I think that you're right in suspecting your lens. The image quality goes down near the edges, it's most visible at the bottom left.You could see if you can borrow a better lens from someone, and try the same setup with same exposure etc. for comparison.