Super Sharp Images - what am I missing?

[theantiquetiger]

I see many images that are so sharp, you can cut yourself on them. What am I missing to obtain these? It's more than just in focus, it's nearly life like. I know lighting is important, but even the best of my images lack this sharpness.

Is a lot of it PP in photoshop, with layers and layers to obtain it?

I am talking images like the on in this link (I just did a quick search and grabbed the first one I saw) :

Portrait workshop | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

I know that image is a studio shot with controlled lighting etc, but it is so clear, it is life like.

Is it just my equipment (Canon 60D), and it can only be obtained with professional equipment, Mark 5, etc?

I've seen landscape images with this life like sharpness to it, so I know it's just not studio lighting.

[Marko]

IMO, The image you posted is not sharper than your sharpest images....it's an average example of sharpness not an exceptional one.

You'll need to show us additional images....pictures are worth many more words than explanations of those pictures

In my experience uber-sharpness is a combination of the factors;
1 - shutter speed. make sure it's appropriate for your subject and hold holding ability.
2 - post processing. You can easily sharpen one area and not other areas. Selective sharpening is part of the secret sauce. Oversharpening kills an image so make sure you don't go too far. There are also other pluggins and programs that can deftly add sharpness and 'microcontrast' and look superb when they are not overused.
3 - additional advanced techniques like focus stacking which is normally reserved only for landscapes.
4 - Focusing on elements with ACTUAL detail (eye lashes, grasses, the weave in a shirt) will also reveal that detail when in sharp focus. Things that naturally have fever details (like soft clouds) can never look razor sharp.
5 - Lighting - front light doesn't reveal details as well as some sidelight....so lighting is very much key.

Hope that may help

[theantiquetiger]

I did the search on my phone (working today), so it maybe a bad example, so I may need to wait until I get home this evening to find example.

I feel this is the sharpest image I've taken in my short career (just example because I uploaded it from my phone to photobucket, so this copy may not be sharp, but my original is)



I did spent a couple hours on it in PP to obtain the black sky I wanted.

[Marko]

I've seen lovely sharpness in your family's eyes that rival or beat this image. Dude, you are selling yourself short.

I'll need to see an eye or a close up of a detailed part of an though before i go - 'OMG that's crazy sharpness'.

I did a podcast with Michael Breitung a few months back and here is a Gold standard image for sharpness you can compare with Sharpness on steroids - Focus stacking interview with Michael Breitung | Photography.ca Notice that there are soft AND uber-sharp areas in the image. This helps make the sharpness stand out.

[Mad Aussie]

Just adding to Marko's comments and your questions...

The Canon 60D is certainly not the culprit. Neither would a 650D. My camera's are 40D's and earlier photos were a 400D.

Lenses can make a difference. There are reasons why some lenses are $1000's when others are $100's. Quite often, sharpness can be one of those reasons.

Depth of Field can make sharpness far more obvious depending on the image. For instance, you might have something sharp within the DOF but overall the photo can still feel soft if the DOF is narrow. Therefore using higher f-stops will increase the overall sharpness feel of a shot.
Shooting directly at the subject (for instance straight at a fallen log from a side on perspective as opposed to shooting along the log) makes overall sharpness easier to obtain.

Lots of detail. If a scene has lots and lots of small elements (grains of sand, rocks, leaves, texture etc) sharpness is then far more prominent than a scene with little detail.

Photo size. I don't even bother commenting on sharpness on any photo presented at less than 800 pixels. It's just too easy to make a shot look sharper by making it smaller. So don't compare your own sharpness to an image that's small in size.

Light. Although mentioned, we should mention that night shots in particular can be difficult to get sharp throughout if sections have bright light in them. The very process of long exposure will cause light bleed/aura's around some objects or even whole building for instance that give you the impression of a lack of sharpness. Your sample image above shows this nicely. The Sign 'Chimes' is nice and sharp but the sign 'Varsity' is not. Too much light has caused the effective blur around the neon sign.

In the end though, although many shots I take don't get any sharpening, many do. Most of those I simply do a small overall sharpen but every now and then, especially with eyes and the like, I use a selective sharpening process I explained here back in 2009 Post Processing Sharpening - the Mad way! You may know how to do this, maybe even another way, but hope it helps you or others watching.

[Iguanasan]

Very well said, MA. You said all of the things I was thinking