I think my photos are not clear enough

ggbutcher · September 4, 2022, 2:05pm

Welcome to the forum! I’m glad the membership committee accepted your application…

I’ve compared your image with other D3100 images, and I think it’s well-within the expectations for this camera. It’s a 14MP camera with the kit 18-35 lens, which are probably well-matched with respect to their combined resolution. You’ll find that camera-lens performance is kind of a see-saw relationship; lenses that look fine on a “smaller” camera will show their hindside when you upgrade the camera, and vice versa. I have one of those lenses, came with my D50 in 2006, but I don’t use it anymore. At the time, I wanted a decently large wide-tele for travel, so I got the Nikkor 18-200mm, worked like a treat on a 6MP camera…

I still have my D7000, the second camera in my progression, and it has the Nikkor 18-140mm welded to it. That’s a 16MP sensor, in the ball park with yours, and I found that lens to be a fine match for the sensor resolution. We recently procured one as a Christmas gift to my grandson with his D3500, and he’s quite pleased.

I write all this because I had the same experience starting out with the D50. Some of my best compositions were with that camera, but when I pixel-peep I see the sort of things you’re experiencing - limits to the sensor-lens resolution. What I found back then was paying careful attention to processing helped to mitigate that. Particularly, I’d try for good contrast in the overall image, which tends to look less-soft. Then, I would produce web-sized JPEGs with somewhat aggressive post-resize sharpening, which increases the acutance, or ‘illusion of sharpness’. Here’s such treatment of your image, 800x600 dimensions, a 1.5 value fed to the convolution sharpen tool in my software:

In low light, you’ll need a decent denoise algorithm; IIRC all the tools discussed here have such.

After all that camera talk above, don’t be too quick to get rid of your present kit. It’ll make decent images, and you’ll learn a lot about its capabilities and limitations that will make future upgrades more well-informed.

Oh, and so you help all of us who downloaded your raw not go to prison, you need to post an appropriate license for use with the link to the NEF; I use this one: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, but you might want to choose one of their alternatives that doesn’t allow commercial reuse.

Karl · September 4, 2022, 3:10pm

As others have said, I think it might be a combination of the lens and F-stop. Generally speaking, kit lenses are made to be as cheap as possible, which means poorer image-quality (how this shows up can be “soft” images, poorly controlled TCA and/or distortion.) Shooting wide-open will exaggerate any issues the lens has.

My advice to you is to make friends with Nikon cameras in your area (photo clubs, both formal and casual, are a good way to do this.) Shooting with other people provides many benefits - two that might aid you is getting insight on technique, and if they have compatible gear, they might let you try a different lens while you’re out together. (Even if it’s the same lens model, there are variances in manufacturing.)

paulmatthijsse · September 4, 2022, 3:55pm

Hello @zerone, welcome here! For many years I used a Nikon D40 and the same kit lens as yours, except for the VR. The photos always looked fine, except those who didn’t but that was my fault.

I suppose you mean with not clear that they are not tad sharp? Don’t forget you took the above shot at 55mm, which is the ‘far end’ of that lens. Kit lenses tend to be softer or show more artefacts (lens faults) at the long end (the short end - 17mm - was always OK with my lens). Perhaps there was some wind causing the leaves to move? Did you use auto focus and if yes, what kind of AF? I ask this because I’ve the impression that the focus points to the leaves on the top left. In the exif info I saw that VR was activated.

I suggest to do the following to test if your lens is bad quality (that can always happen but I’ve never seen that with a Nikkor till now).

Put your camera on a tripod or table, choose a static scene (so without leaves moving in the wind), use the 17mm position, set self timer to 5 or 10 seconds, use the A position (Aperture priority), set aperture to 8 and take the photo. Any better or you’re still dissatisfied?

As others suggested, clean your lens on a regular base.

PS. Perhaps you can lend the Nikkor 1.8/35 from someone (or search for an occasion), it’s one of the cheapest Nikkors and a very fine and sharp lens imo. I used it a lot on my D40, and since many years on my D7000.

zerone · September 4, 2022, 10:27pm

Thank you for all of your comments.
Indeed clear is not a very good defined term and excuse me because my English is not my mother language and probably I’m not that efficient in using it.
But what I really mean by “clear” is the kind of messy appearance of distinct objects like foliage or perhaps far objects. I also mean kind of blurry image, especially if I zoom on to the image, and I’m talking about the raw file. Of course treating it with sharpness or local contrast perhaps reduces the level of the problem, but I’m asking for the raw image.

Regarding this specific image, I’ll try to explain it with images that were cut from 3 points, A, B &C:

Point A
The top of the fir tree. The appearance is blurry, probably because of the wind. In fact it should of have being moving quite fast, since the top vertical branch has been recorded twice. Also the two horizontal left and right small branches do the same. So this should be the cause of the wind. I think the same theme applies to all the foliage at the right part of the image, which is kind of blurry (I think)

Point B
The three tops of the little trees are much clearer, despite the fact that they are at the same distance from the camera. They shouldn’t be moving much.

Point C
This is much clearer or less blurry than the top of the tree at point A. However it is not as clear as I would expect.

Probably in this photo my shutter speed was not as fast? I was watching it and I thought that I’m safe having 1/160. But it seems that this is safe ONLY for camera shake, and not for objects movement. Additionally, I think I remember focusing on the trees in the middle section of the image. I’m using Single Servo AF and Single Point AF mode. But in combination with the wide aperture, my depth of field could have been shallow.

I have repeatedly seen photos like that are not clear or that are blurry. I think distortion of the lens is an issue of course, but it would not provide blur on the edges of the leaves but perhaps haziness or distortion of the shape of the leaves, which is not a significant matter in my case.

This is my first DSLR camera. Before that I had a compact point and shoot Sony DSC-S40, and the images that the camera took were far more “clear” and frozen, with good lighting conditions, fully sharp etc. (of course edited by the software camera in jpeg). And the sensor was only 3.1 mega pixels, if I remember correctly. My phone also takes pretty sharp and frozen pictures, without blur, but soooooooo much edited, overcooked etc.
So comparing these experiences is what fired my concern, trying to find what is going wrong and pinpoint the problem in order to improve it, if possible. For sure my skills are not the best and need improvement! Discussing with others these issues, helps a long way along. I will try to find other photographers in my area.

Oh, and excuse me for overusing the term “clear”

ggbutcher · September 4, 2022, 10:56pm

Oh, gee, I never thought to check the shutter speed; the metadata says 10 seconds. ??

sls141 · September 5, 2022, 4:18am

Looking at the exifdata, I see you used autofocus. Try to find out the hyperfocal distance at 55mm. Use that in manual mode and try the “sweet spot” aperture of F/8 as @kofa pointed out. Shoot the scene again and compare. Good luck!

paperdigits · September 5, 2022, 4:54am

Rent or borrow a prime lens.

Terry · September 5, 2022, 5:38am

I just opened your image in DT and it is really soft in sharpness. I feel it would be worth investing in a better lens. A good prime lens is always sharper than a zoom, but zoom lenses are more convenient. Which lens to buy depends upon your budget. I bought an 18-300mm Nikon zoom and loved the lens for travelling and general photography.

Nick_Auskeur · September 5, 2022, 7:13am

Remove the UV filter if you have one fitted (you dont need one unless you are in dusty, sandy places really), check your shooting technique (elbows into the body, breath control, prop up against something etc etc), control where the camera is focusing (no auto focus).

jorismak · September 5, 2022, 9:42am

Like others have said, it is a bit of a budget lens. Nothing against that, but knowing it weaknesses can help you get better shots (like knowing when to stop down more, or when to zoom in lens but take a few steps forward if possible, etc…). Shot at f 5.6 you say. It’s not wide open - I’m guessing - but it is close to it. Maybe closing down a bit more and raising ISO would’ve been a better compromise. But that’s hard to tell after the shot is taken, this is what ‘learning your gear’ is all about :). Maybe you don’t like the noise at higher ISO’s, and you rather have a softer look from your lens, maybe not. I can’t make that decision for you.

There is (was?) a rule of thumb that if you shot something at 55mm, you should not go slower with your shutter speed than 1/55th. But if you have lens or sensor stabilizing, you could go slower. But if the wind is blowing, leaves are moving and you’ll get motion blur from that. And that rule comes from a time when we weren’t pixel peeping images. So I take some margin in my mind always. In other words, your 1/160 sounds fine to me. Depends if there was really strong wind :).

Also, although not always fun if you are a ‘walking and brining my camera with me’ kind of shooter, but a tripod always helps more with shots like this than people imagine when they are just starting out .

Also, make sure lens correction is applied, specially for Darktable. It can help with ‘chromatic aberrations’, minute color misalignment in the lens, specially at distant edges it can help clean things up some times.

Also, Darktable doesn’t really apply sharpening by default (at least mine doesn’t out of the box ). And a bit of sharpening is always welcome, but do not overdo it.
Programs like Adobe Lightroom / Adobe Camera Raw always apply a bit of sharpening, even when the sharpening slider is at 0% so to speak. It’s in their camera handling for specific sensors.

Also, if you have an image that looks pretty good when viewing at 100% in Darktable, exporting it and resizing it down for the web can take away that sharp feeling. That’s normal, that is why sometimes an ‘output sharpening’ step is done → sharpen after resizing down, depending on expected viewing distance / method. (If you’re really picky out these things, you apply different sharpening after sizing if it’s for the web, for a small print, or a big print, or even different kind of printing methods, etc…).

And then I want to exit with saying that sharpness and contrast go hand in hand. If you have more difference between blacks and whites, they stand out more. If things stand out more, you see them as sharper / more detailed. Sometimes lowering the blacks or raising the whites (global contrast increase / local contrast increase) and do quite a bit for your perceived sharpness of a shot.

So, TL;DR: There are tricks to get more out of your shot, and a bit of careful processing is always needed. This is not that different to the first shots I have taken by simply ‘aiming the camera and clicking’ with the kit lens that came on it. Slowly you learn a few things that you need to keep reminding yourself about, things that can make a simple shot better. Or mistakes you learned from. And slowly they become automatic in your mind .

zerone · September 5, 2022, 12:54pm

I took the shot, without having any goals in my mind. And I think it is a recurring theme there.

I think I chose the wide aperture, because it was cloudy and I wanted light coming in, in order to be able to raise my shutter speed.
But when opening the photo in the computer, I was expecting to be clear and sharp but without setting that goal in the first place, when I took the shot.

Thanks again for all your great comments.

sls141 · September 5, 2022, 3:04pm

@zerone I did a little research and found two online DOF calculators giving hyperfocal distances of 19m and 19.96m for 55mm at f/8. I also found there is a hyperfocal distance given in pyexiftool from your raw file. That one reads 26.8m.

Your focus distance is 3.35m, so it’s not surprising that the branch at the top left is the clearest. That’s the closest to the 3~4m DOF listed. Before you spend money on new lenses, learn how to get the most from what you have now.

paulmatthijsse · September 5, 2022, 4:01pm

Hello, I suggest to change the first one to Auto-Servo AF. From the manual:

Auto-Servo AF: Camera automatically selects single-servo autofocus if subject is stationary, continuous-servo autofocus if subject is moving.

Be aware that in the Single Point AF mode, the user must select a focus point. It is easy to make a fault here and set the focus point with the cursors to the upper left without that one is aware of that. Check in the info display where your focus point is. See the red area in the screenshot.

info_display

Try to change the AF mode to Auto-Area AF, where the camera automatically detects subject and selects focus point.

A question: are all your photos “not clear enough” or just some?

Another suggestion. You say that this is your first digital reflex. That’s not the same as using a compact camera, it’s a bit more complex because you have more possibilities to adjust things. But a very beginner-friendly mode is the Program mode (that’s the P on the PSAM dial). In that mode the camera takes many decisions for you, you only have to frame and hold the camera tight when you take a photo.

Good luck!

123sg · September 5, 2022, 10:28pm

Hi Dimitris, and welcome!

I’ve just had a look at your file. In my opinion, there’s nothing major wrong with it. I think the softness is a combination of lens blur (it is a basic lens) and also some subject movement. Have a look at my jpg. Any better? I’ve applied a preset I have for the diffuse or sharpen module, which gives a fairly aggressive sharpening, and I think it helps. You can download the .xmp file and load it as sidecar in dt’s lighttable view if you want to see what I’ve done.
I’d suggest trying a few experiments, with a stationary subject, as has been suggested already. Try different apertures, VR on and off and anything else you want to try.
Oh, and a better lens, especially a prime, would be better…
Good luck!
Edit: I’ve just looked again, and I think I may have misused diffuse and sharpen a bit. I do think that there’s definitely motion blur there - maybe there was some camera shake?

_DSC0731(1).NEF.xmp (8.0 KB)

Terry · September 5, 2022, 11:44pm

I am willing to stand corrected if I am wrong, but my experience with the 18-55mm kit lens is that f5.6 at 55mm is wide open. I was really shocked at the drop off in sharpness from this lens in the supplied image. I am use to Nikon kit lenses producing surprising sharp results for what they are. But this lens needs replacing if the poster wants to get better images. The equipment is letting him down. The drop off was more pronounced near the edges suggesting this was not a focus problem or camera shake problem, but just a disappointing lens.

jorismak · September 6, 2022, 9:59am

Kit lens is (often) worse at the zoom end, and is (often) worse wide open. So both are at play here :).
As someone else said, his focus was pretty close (if the recorded focus distance is correct, I can’t find it?), so only things closer to the camera are properly in focus.

I’ve opened the picture now and I’m clicking around in it.

The green trees at the very bottom, and at like 1/3rd on the left, are pretty sharp. If you then go up, the leaves are pretty sharp and the darker tree in the middle is pretty clear.
Pretty much everything on the right side is not sharp and pretty blurry. But it’s also closer to the camera! The trees on the bottom left are still pretty good. They are in the distance.
Now, I expect the branch that is ‘in front’ on the far left, about top 1/3rd in height to be also blurry. Because it’s pretty close. And it seems less blurry than the top right, for example. But the top right seems closer to the focusing distance, so I expected it to be sharper, not blurrier.

So, I come to another conclusion to be added to all the tips and things mentioned here (which all seem very correct and true!)

Your lens seems sharper on the left half compared to the right half. I think this is what they call ‘decentering’? (Correct me if this is not correct, I never understood the term).
Basically, it’s just a defect of your lens. Happens in older lenses (older designs) and cheaper lenses. So the kit lens from on old D3100 can have this, for sure. The kit lens on my very first Sony A100 was also notoriously bad for this. And I have a 80s Minolta AF 16-35 2.8 A-mount lens that is just hilariously bad in this example (but that lens is now 40+ years old and cost me less than 100,- EUR on eBay at some point :P).

Stopping down can (and will) help with this, so that means be more at >= f8 and <= f16 with your lens when using the end of your zoom range.

I notice that your shot is pretty much at the limit of clipping a bit. Nicely shot! (Or does this Nikon have a fancy working highlight-priority mode? ). What I mean is that you shouldn’t have taken the shot by exposing more (not shooting it brighter). If you want it brighter, do it in software later, but you shot it so bright, that it’s pretty much right against the limits of your sensor. That’s a very good thing! Overexposing makes the sky a hassle, while AFAIK any Nikon old or new can handle a bit of pushing later in software without issues.

jorismak · September 6, 2022, 10:12am

Not Darktable, but quickly loaded in DxO and loaded it’s Velvia emulation, boosted exposure a bit and reduced highlights to not clip (the Velvia emulation darkens things quite a bit).
Then boosted it’s ‘micro’ and ‘fine’ contrast (kind of local contrast enhancements AFAIK).

Render out, resize it to 2000x2000 and apply some sharpening at that step. You see that lots of areas ‘are not bad’, but when looking at the unsized 100% of the original image, you’ll see that DxO tries to over sharpen things where it knows the lens will produce blur. The leaves on the left don’t look that great, but they try to make it sharp.

But the right side, is still soft. Maybe the wind was blowing there, or your right side is softer than your left.

zerone · September 6, 2022, 10:18am

Indeed @Terry. At 55mm the widest aperture is f5.6 for this lens.

Yesterday I went for a walk with my camera with the goal to take the sharpest pictures. I put the camera in Aperture mode and took the shots at f9 - f11, shutter speeds over 1/800, to be sure that it is enough (and the corresponding ISO for good exposure). I thought that this is all it takes to have focused pictures from foreground to background. However I was surprised when I saw these two pictures on my computer (again jpegs are from the camera, without any overcooked processing by myself ):

1/1000, f/11.0, 55mm, ISO 800, focus distance: 1m
The first was focused on top of the metal rail, right at the slit, a distance of about 1 m away from the point I was standing. Some time ago I was reading on the hyperfocal distance, and I read somewhere about the technique of focusing a few meters in front of me, like a rough guide without calculating anything. And that it enough. Apparently is not!

1/800, f/11.0, 55mm, ISO 800, , focus distance: 200+m
The second one was focused at the rocks of the sea wall and is much more clearer.

At 55mm, f/11.0 the hyperfocal distance is 14.23m! while the near limit is 7.12m! So my focusing at 1-1.5m was way wrong for a focused and sharp picture.

Regarding DoF while focusing in 1.5m distance, at 55mm, f/11 is 0.31m in total, from 1.36 to 1.67! I would never thought that this was possible with f/11!!!

By the way, the exif data regarding the focus distance is not accurate.

So now I understand why some or many photos I take are looking somewhat blurry.

Apparently my technique is the main culprit (perhaps the only one given the limits of my equipment), or more precisely my lack of good understanding of the camera. I’m not complaining though, the fact that needs more work and studying to capture what you want was the main reason I bought this one over a point and shoot camera.

paulmatthijsse · September 6, 2022, 1:01pm

Hey, you’re already making progress !

Well, I think your camera is okay and the kit lens as well. The D3100 is a very good camera to start your DSLR journey, so have fun!

Claes · September 6, 2022, 2:08pm

@zerone

Please perform this test, as outlined by @paulmatthijsse, above:

Put your camera on a tripod or table, choose a static scene (so without leaves moving in the wind), use the 17mm position, set self timer to 5 or 10 seconds, use the A position (Aperture priority), set aperture to 8 and take the photo. Any better or you’re still dissatisfied?

Have fun!
Claes in Lund, Sweden