Lessons Learned

I have never been known as the "sharpest tack in the box", but I am known as being the most "persistent tack in the box". In other words, I am not very smart. Realizing this shortcoming, I am always willing to learn new things, even if it means learning them over and over again.

Today was no exception. As I mentioned yesterday, I am renting a couple of new wide angle lenses with the intent of purchasing one of them. I was reading, however, a comment made by Ken Rockwell which basically said that all modern day lenses are very good with little difference. The key to "tack sharp" photos isn't about the equipment but about the photographer.

While I find some truth in this statement, I am dubious about the rest. So, I decided to take some time to read about shooting really sharp photos. You all know this already, but I guess I needed a refresher or to relearn some things. One of them is to shoot in manual focus rather than rely on auto focus all the time. I found a good, concise commentary and video on the Zeiss website here..

One thing I did learn today was how to use my "live view" to manually focus. Yes, yes, I know. This is Photog 101 stuff. But I have never spent much time using "live view". I've always relied on my viewfinder. And that is why I have never been really comfortable with manual focus. So, this evening I decided to give it a try. I mounted my camera on a tripod, then placed two wine bottles about 6 inches apart and put a wine glass between them. I set my camera to aperture priority at f5.3. Then using live view, I roughly focused on the wine glass. Using live view again, I zoomed into the wheat stalk leaf in front and focused more carefully. This is the result. I got a nice DOF behind the furthest wine bottle, and less focused letters on that bottle, but more focused letters on the closer bottle, but still somewhat fuzzy. But the wheat stalk leaf that I focused on came in sharp, as I had intended it.

I tried this method with various apertures (more or less DOF), focusing on the different wine bottles, etc. Each time, the detail was much better.

So, maybe I need to give more credit to Ken Rockwell's comment. But I still do not entirely agree with his comment. There are other technical aspects to consider when acquiring a lens (barrel distortion, chromatic aberrations, flare, etc) as well as whether it is sharp where it needs to be sharp. But he is totally correct that we need to practice and refine our technique for shooting the sharpest photos that we can with what we have.

Just another lesson learned . . .

Have a wonderful weekend all!