Resolution and focus

[Adrian]

Ive been shooting my nikon 4500 quite a bit, and Im having a little trouble getting a sharp image at times. My question is does resolution have an impact on sharpness, ie if I shoot at a higher resolution and shrink the pic, or not, will there be deeper detail. Not sure if that makes sense. Im shooting at the smallest resolution, and even though the camera is focused, it still seems just a tad out of focus. TIA

 

[Anonymous]

If the resolution is low enough for the picture size, it will give a fuzzy look. But, it could really be out of focus as well. Personally I despise auto focus and one of the biggest challenges for me, switching from film 35mm slr photogrophy to digicam, has been getting the autofocus to work consistently. Particularly for indoor scenes.

 

[Wampatom]

I think I understand your question. Sometimes (actually quite a lot) I take pictures that are slightly out of focus. The picture (3000 x 2000 pixels) is a failure in the sense that it can’t be printed as a 13x19 inch photo. However, most pictures presented on this site are a maximum of 640 pixels in size. In photo shop (or any other program) reduce the size of the image from 3000 to 640 pixels and then use the unsharp mask (in ps I use 200%, 0.2 radius). This only works with pictures that are slightly off, it can’t work miracles.

You get the best results if you shoot with the maximum resolution for your camera, then reduce the number of pixels as needed.

 

[Anonymous]

I wholeheartedly agree about shooting at the highest resolution possible. When I started in digital photography, I shot at 640x480 (what the heck would I ever need a larger file than that, for???). Well I learned realllly quick that if I wanted to crop it or print it larger than a 4x6 I needed higher resolution. I shoot everything now at the highest my 6.1MP Canon will give me.

 

[Adrian]

Thanks for the replies, im gonna try it at a higher res and see what happens. The reason I didnt do it in the first place is that I didnt want the file to take forever to load, will shrinking the pic reduce the load time? Heres one of the particular pics that have been giving me trouble, I have shot the scene dozens of times and I cant get a shot that looks really focused, the current in the tank is off, and Im using a tripod, but it still dosnt seem sharp, maybe its just me?

 

[Anonymous]

Hmm I'm no expert by any means at all, however from the looks of it, the cammera is focusing in on a black stop of the coral, try getting the cammera center onto something with more stuff, like on a polp or something... then give it a try at its max zoom

 

[Wampatom]

Your picture looks sharp to me. I am viewing it on a LCD screen which is quite sharp. I have noticed others complaining that pictures are soft when they seem good to me, so the display may play a role. I don’t think your picture can be any sharper (note some near and far points are not as sharp as the polyps in the center, but this is a dof problem). To test for sharpness look at a place in the picture where there is a sharp boundary. Expand the picture so you can clearly see the individual pixels. The transition should only cover one pixel. I tried this with your picture and it passes the test.

 

[hdtran]

May be a depth-of-field issue. Your picture could be sharp at one location (one plane, or one spherical surface, to be more precise), and out of focus everywhere else?

Edit: Woops, never mind. Discussed in previous reply... Ditto depth-of-field. Try setting a smaller f/stop (e.g. f/16 rather than f/2).