Hi everyone! I recently bought a Canon EOS 2000D that came with an 18-55 lense. I want to use for photographing my miniatures. I did multiple test-runs now and every photo I take turns out blurry and I'm at a little bit of a loss and wondering if maybe my camera or lense was shipped out broken? The setup I use indoors is: - Photobox - 2 Daylight-Lamps angled in front of the miniature - Tripod with mounted camera - Camera connected to computer via tethering cable, where I use Canon Utility to tweak settings and have a live preview. There i always focused on the miniature. The fotos of miniatures were all shot with different settings, backgrounds and camera distance (30cm-1m) to test around and all had the same blurryness. They were all shot in manual mode, but with AF on my lense on. Rough Settings I used : - 100 ISO - 10F-25F - Different settings for Whitebalance, but most times set to "Custom" - Shutterspeed adjusted to apperture so it looked "fine" for me in the preview The next day I went outdoor and shot some fotos with the AF setting on my camera, to see if they also appeared blurry, which they did. I have attached a couple of pictures to show the issue, but can of course attach more. I dont remember which foto used which setting exactly (since I was testing around), but could of course make a couple where I use specific settings for test purposes and upload them! I hope somebody here can maybe help me figure out if I am doing something wrong (which might definately be the case) or maybe my camera or lense has an issue and I should go and return it. Note that I had to heavily crop the images to upload them here and I dont know if maybe some information gets lost there aswell. I could re-shoot smaller images if that is needed to identify the problems. It might be a little hard to see with them so small. I have also uploaded the images in original size + crop here (hope the sharing settings work ): https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1sZHHrtQITiHUi2UMFRCrDH1-_04RXJhP?usp=sharing Thanks in advance, Mo
+ƒ16 and you may well be getting softness coming in from diffraction, maybe ƒ12 max, have you done a tripod test with a cereal box as a target with fine sharp text on it also a bank note could be used so you can test the lens and camera's sharpness and resolving power another test worth doing is a diagonal test to make sure you donit have any back or front focus issues, put a tape measure or ruler at 45 degrees to the plane of focus then focus on a certain number and see if the resulting image has that number as the focal point of if it has drifted ahead or behind this is a thing with mirror cameras, mirrorless don't have that issue, does you camera have the ability to shoot with the mirror up so you shoot in a live view? (not sure on yours as i have the M50) also, how much are you cropping the images for your own viewing, not for the media posting, just wondering if you are over cropping if more expensive prime lenses are out of the question i have had excellent results using vintage lenses like the takumar 55mm ƒ1.8 and pentacon 50mm ƒ1.8 on miniatures they are fully manual and have great optics and build but cost around £30 on ebay and you would need an adapter for your body which should be around £10 or less if you find from your bank note test you cant resolve the detail you want you might want a dedicated macro lens on the cheaper side the sigma EF 105mm ƒ2.8 EX OS is a good one with AF and OS (around £160 second hand / £300 new, think still available new) little more pricey but may have come down the Laowa EF 100mm ƒ2.8 2:1 macro lens is stupid sharp, fully manual but does have a auto aperture but you probably use it in manual any way (currently one on mpb.com for £375 think i paid £450 few years ago)
With this camera and lens the results should be much better than you are getting, I think you need to forget all the strange camera settings you are using and try a few basic shots. Set the camera as below: Large JPEG ISO 100 Mode AV Aperture f8 AF single centre point Drive one shot Exposure Auto White balance auto Lens AF on Lens IS off (if your lens has it) Veiwfinder shooting mode (not live view) Now find an outdoor subject in daylight with some detail about 1-2 meters from the camera, preferably whatever you are focusing on in the centre should be larger than the focus point. Take the pcture. Now change these settings only: Lens AF off Live view shooting Magnify live view to 10x Using the same scene as before, carefully adjust focus manually for best result and take another picture. Do not crop or adjust the photos, put them on the forum preferably using Google drive as before, then we can make a proper judgement in oder to assess your problem.
Generally It seems looking at the originals that you are over cropping and creating softness. You have some with the focus not hitting the figure. You also have some with slow shutters like 1/2 a sec ; hand holding you should be at least 1/60th for this length of lens. Or things get blurry very fast Take this image below, upper right hand objects look like the focus was targeting up there so no wonder the guy is soft even at full image view. Shoot tighter, crop with your feet and get near the object. If your cropping more than 20% of the image you should have shot closer to begin with. Images should be viewed at 300dpi, for sharpness. somewhere around 25-30% zoom in a viewer of the Original file gives you an idea where ideal sharpness is. Pay close attention to what focus is looking at with a half shutter press before taking the image. But if you want to fill the frame with the figure you should fill the frame with the figure, cropping in that far will show the image below 100dpi of the original demonstrations and surely it will be soft. Are you shooting raw or JPG, jpg may are may not have some sharp masking on it edges? If Raw you should before expose dial in a little unsharp mark to define edges better.
