james chua

Hi! my name is James. i'm not familiar with 1d mark ii and old 8mega pexil. i bought a used 24-70mm f 2.8 lens and i.ve tried lot's of picture and practice and try to read the manual on how to but can not get a good copy. pictures not crisp as people said. what wrong with my camera or the lens that a bought? please advise

looks good in here but in my PC it's blurry.


i was surprised the picture looks good here but in my pc it's blurry.


looks good in here but in my PC it's blurry.

JimH Loc: Western South Jersey, USA

I just checked your top pic, it doesn't look too blurry on my monitor here - but I noticed in your EXIF you were at f/5.6 and ISO 200. That might be a factor. I'd have taken that a smaller aperture if the available light was adequate.

Handheld? Was it at all windy? The tops of the palm trees look like they were moving in the breeze a little bit.

chapjohn Loc: Tigard, Oregon

Are you using a tripod or monopod to support your camera? If you are, try turning off the image stability system either on the lens or in the camera or preferably both. Many camera's not have IS built into them, so it is on lens.

Dun1 Loc: Atlanta, GA

The images do not look blurry to me or on the images you posted. It could be the monitor you are using, and if you still use a CRT vs and LCD monitor therein may lie the problem. I know this may sound stoopid, if you wear glasses especially bifocals there you have distant correction in the top half of the glasses and a reading correction in the bottom half, that may cause you to think the images might look blurred. You might also check or take a look at a monitor calibration tool such as Spyder etc.
I might be the only one it may be early in the day, but I don't see any extreme blur

Dun1 Loc: Atlanta, GA

Another suggestion, reduce the ISO, and increase the f/stop to f/11, or f/16. Of course you may not be able to hand hold the camera at the lower ISO's so you may want to try a tripod and cable release or timed release.
F/16 used to be referred to by old film camera shooters as "Sweet 16". See if increasing the depth of field will remove some of what you think my be blur. The image of the model is as it should be the model is in focus and the back ground is not.

Michael O' Loc: Midwest right now

James, me boy, I think someone hit on the possible problem : try cutting your lens aperture down as far as you reasonably can so long as you still can gather enough light for a proper exposure. It appears to me that your close in objects, like the bench on the right in the first photo, may be appreciably more sharply in focus than the distant trees and building. Take your lens setting down to something like f-11 or 16, and then notice on your lens barrel what should be in reasonable focus as you set the closest item at the shortest distance shown on your barrel. When you do this, if you then look at the furthest distance shown at that focusing point, you will probably see all will be in focus all the way to infinity. That range of focus will likely be achieved by actually focusing at something like maybe 30 to 40 feet. Conversely, if you want to shoot something at 15 feet in front of you, you can open the lens way up and use a
short shutter time to get the right exposure, focus directly on the subject, and most everything else will be out of focus -- bingo, you've used another way to accent only your subject proper. Play around with it -- experimenting will make you more capable of doing what you want with your subjects by varying the f-stop and setting the shutter time accordingly -- or
reversing the two by using the shutter time as the lock point and varying the lens opening as the needed variable to achieve the effect you seek. Example -- shoot wide open (lens) with whatever (high) speed is required, and then focus on a friend's partially turned face, and focus on her nearest eye, then notice how her ear will be a bit out of focus ! Do this with a telephoto lens and the result will be even more extreme because the depth of focus (okay - depth of field) will be even more shallow.
Don't always shoot on "auto". If you use either "shutter" or "exposure" time as the set and the other as the variable, if you then use a separate light meter you can quickly see the range of possibilities from the meter. For years I used a Norwood Director, but then it crashed so I had to go to the same type, a Sekonic. Both read available light from your shooting position -- much better that reading reflected light. Using other than your camera "Auto" will lead you to a being a much more flexible photographer. Good luck and have fun as you experiment.

George H Loc: Brooklyn, New York

James,
I have the 1Ds Mark II, the big brother to your camera. You photos look very good on my computer. Have you ever calibrated your computer? If not I would recommend that be done. Also there is a sweet spot for all camera and lens combinations. The 24-70 is a fantastic lens, with from what I can see you are using the wrong f stops and shutter speeds, also do not forget to set white balance that is an imperative in that camera.

marcomarks Loc: Ft. Myers, FL

I've been sitting here pondering this problem like Sherlock Holmes trying to solve a murder and reading the comments of others. A key factor I am seeing is that you titled your examples, "Looks good in here but blurry on my PC" which means one of three things to me:

1. The software you're using to look at them on your PC is blurring them. If it's post-editing software, maybe you should look in an area that is something like "General Preferences" and try to find what dot-per-inch the software is displaying your photos at. Some will automatically choose 72 dpi which is the highest that a computer monitor can display. Some can and will choose 300 dpi for no obvious reason which is slower to load into your video card, is slower to refresh when you edit something, and can cause strange patterns in straight lines, on roof eaves, in house siding, etc. that are in your photos. It's called Moire pattern. Try going into your Windows File Manager (Windows Explorer, I suppose) and find the photo files there. Right click on one and choose Preview. This should open a Windows previewer that is NOT your editing software. If the photos are clear and crisp there, then it's your software.

2. You are probably looking at the photos large on your computer screen during editing and you see them in more detail. When you put them on UH, they are smaller and the lack of crispness isn't as noticeable. If you made a wallet-sized print of one of your shots you'd probably think it is crisp and perfect. The larger the image you're looking at, the more obvious the flaws are.

3. The monitor and/or graphics card of your PC isn't up to par. Put your photo files on a memory card and take them to the home of a friend who has a very new PC with a new large LCD monitor. Find your files on the card using file manager, again some form of Windows Explorer, and do the right click, Preview, thing. If the photos look awesome on their LCD monitor, you probably need a new LCD monitor, need to use a higher resolution on your video card, or may need a new higher performance graphics video card in your computer with more graphics memory onboard.

Personally, I don't see anything objectionable about your samples. They may not be as crisp as someone who has boosted sharpness with post editing. They may not be as crisp as a fixed focal length lens instead of a zoom. They may not be as crisp as a camera on a tripod that was fired by a wireless remote control with the internal image stabilization turned off. They may not be as sharp as using an aperture smaller than f/11. But they're not bad at all.

Contrary to what someone else said, I like to use a minimum of ISO 200 outdoors (unless I'm on a blinding white sand beach) to get my shutter speed up. Trees (even pines and other evergreen trees with needles) can move slightly with a minor breeze and cause what seems to be photographer or camera created blur but a 1/125th shutter speed can freeze that minor tree movement quite well.

docrob Loc: Durango, Colorado

curious as to how there are "wrong" Fstop/SS combinations on any camera given that the camera chooses?

docrob Loc: Durango, Colorado

Have you cleaned the PC screen?
Do the images look blurred on the camera LCD?
What are you expecting images to look like? In other words, the "problem" could simply be in your own head.

photogrl57 Loc: Tennessee

Yeah when I click on download and view them they are just slightly blurry ... Must be the larger size as someone said.
What I would try is resizing (not cropping). Open the photo and look at the image size. If you are using photoshop .. uncheck the resample box (this will keep the program from changing any of the pixels) then if the resolution is at 72 .. try changing it to 150. This will make the image smaller but keep the resolution of the pixels the same. It might just make enough of a difference to make it look sharper.

marcomarks Loc: Ft. Myers, FL

Why not just zoom out so the displayed image is smaller but the file is not affected?

George H Loc: Brooklyn, New York

Docrob,
Actually the camera he mentioned does not choose unless he puts it into that kind of mode. I know the camera he has, it has a lot of features that he may not be using. When you allow your camera to make the decision on Fstop/SS you have lost the control.

marcomarks Loc: Ft. Myers, FL

I had a wife like that. I had to replace her with a new model.

George H Loc: Brooklyn, New York

[quote=marcomarks][quote=George H]

Marco,
Have to make sure my wife does not see your response or mine, I am still laughing.