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I have a Canon 40D with a 17 - 85mm kit lens and also a 70 - 200mm lens. With the camera set in Av mode, I was attempting to take cityscape shots and found I was not getting a nice sharp image. A friend suggested that I use a tripod and set the camera to "Live View" and manually focus to achieve that sharp image I was looking for. It worked!

Great! Looking forward to seeing the shots!

Gotta learn how to upload a photo. Had a bit of a search around the forum but have not found the answer other than a restriction of 800 pixels wide per photo and limit of 4 photos per thread.

Hi Charlie.

There's nowhere here that you can actually "upload" the images to. Instead, you need to find a hosting service for your images, or host them as a part of your own webspace. Either way is inexpensive and very easy, and that's where the images that you see here reside. Once the images have a presence on the web, you then post a link to the actual web address of your image file(s).

This post explains the whole process in detail.

Getting back on topic, and in reading your post, I doubt very much that shooting in live view mode had much at all to do with the improvement in the apparent sharpness of your image.

Were you shooting at night, or during the day? And what aperture value had you set on the unsharp images, and also on the sharper ones? What focal length were you shooting at?

When you were using the tripod, how did you release the shutter? Did you use a remote, or the self timer, or did you just press the shutter release?

All of these questions may have a bearing upon how your images were captured, as would the specific type of lens (there are at least five different but popular 70-200mm lenses available for your camera) you used, as would the fact that for the sharper images, you were also using a tripod.

If we can understand a little bit more about how you made the various images, and if we can also see your images, then we will be in a much better position to help you understand what's happening under the hood, so to speak, and your photography should, as a result, improve.

Cheers.

Hi Gary,

Thank you for the reply.

I may be wrong and please feel free to shoot me down in flames, however I do not think my Canon lenses automatically focus as sharpely as I would like. The Canon IS 70 - 300mm f4 - 5.6 lens I have produced very poor results when I was shooting hand held from the flag pole at West Pennant Hills towards the city. To be fair though, it was an overcast day and more than likely it was the bloke using the camera rather than the lens. The city was in sunshine as I found the spot to shoot from but the shroud of sunlight had gone by the time I had put the camera bag down and unholstered the camera. It is all in the timing!

All the shots were taken during the day and mostly using the Canon 17 - 85 kit lens at f9 and all the shots that I was unhappy with were hand held shots. I did experiment a lot when at Port Botany and I was shooting from f6 through to f22 but found most of the better shots (still not happy with them) were around f9 to f11. There is one hand held shot of the cranes taken at 1/125 s at f11 with a focal length of 59mm that I think is okay. I converted this to mono and think it passes muster.

When I used the tripod with Live View, I had the tripod weighted with my camera bag as it was an extremely windy day and that sharpest shot was at 1/640 s at f7.1 and a focal length of 85mm and I was happy with this shot. These were cityscapes from Hunters Hill. I did not use the remote because I figured the wind was causing me such a problem that it was just another bit of wire to vibrate in the wind and so just pressed the shutter release. I have another shot from the same spot at 1/80 s at f16 and a focal length of 85mm. This nearly makes it after a bit of sharpening in Photshop but the clouds did not stand out like the shot taken at 1/640 s at f7.1.

Charlie.

I understand how the use of live view can help to improve the sharpness of a shot. I have used it (on my D300) for shooting the moon (with a TC which ruled out AF). I found it much easier to judge sharpness on the LCD zoomed in to see detail than I could through the viewfinder.

Of course a steady tripod and camera release will also help but if subject isn't in focus it doesn't matter how steady the tripod is.

I have been given the same advice as well, but I have yet to use the LiveView on my D300 for this purpose.

Here is a shot I am unhappy with. This was hand held with auto focus. It was just after the dust storms so a lot of dust in the air.



This next shot was taken using Live View with the camera mounted on a tripod and this is much sharper using manual focus.



Charlie

Further to my last post. I was hoping to include a photo larger than a thumbnail size. These photos are stored on flickr.com and when I right click on the larger image and then go to properties, the URL does not end in .jpg. Only the URL of the thumbnails in flickr ends in .jpg hence only the thumbnails posted here. Maybe Garry can tell me how to load a larger image from flickr please.

Charlie

when you have the photo uploaded in flickr, you will end up (by default) at a page like http://www.flickr.com/photos/rflower/2954476150/ which as you say, does not have jpg on the end, so you can post it as a link (as I have done).

Above the photo though, are a series of buttons. One says "All Sizes". Click this button

This should give you a number of options (Small, medium, large etc). Choose the one closest to the desired size you want to show (The current forum software does seem to shrink photos bigger than 800px wide ... may want to check with Gary about that though). Under each of these photos, are links to the photo that can be used to post images. The photos URL (2nd box) can be used in the middle of the IMG button link above ... as per

(

Code: Select all

[img]http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3172/2954476150_4d6ece0264.jpg[/img]

)

Flickrs conditions seem they prefer a clickable link though, but not sure if the text in the first box will work natively in the forum.

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/rflower/2954476150/" title="old tree at Mt Crawford - Final by rflower77, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3172/2954476150_4d6ece0264.jpg" width="500" height="266" alt="old tree at Mt Crawford - Final" /></a>

nope doesn't look like it ... embed the url in the image link ...

Hi Charlie,

You're on the right track with posting the images.

Outback-Charlie wrote:Maybe Garry can tell me how to load a larger image from flickr please.

I'm not a flickr user, so I cannot say definitively, but it would seem that Russell has already offered some valuable info on this matter.

[quote="Outback-Charlie"I may be wrong [/quote]

Me too.

however I do not think my Canon lenses automatically focus as sharpely as I would like.

As I mentioned earlier, there's a lot to bring into account.

First of all, and as a general guide for handholding a lens during shooting, the rule of thumb is that the slowest shutter speed to use would be the equivalent of one over the focal length of the lens in use. Thus, for shooting at 300mm, nothing slower than 1/300. 70mm? 1/70.

And so on. Technologies like IS/VR can help, but the word "help" is the operative word. You're still in charge, though. Have you taken a few minutes to run through the capabilities of your lenses? To see how they perform at different apertures and focal lengths under some controlled conditions? This sort of thing is always a worthwhile exercise, and it gives you a chance to figure out how and where the lenses perform best. Try to do this on a tripod, and using either a remote or the self timer.

The city was in sunshine as I found the spot to shoot from but the shroud of sunlight had gone by the time I had put the camera bag down and unholstered the camera. It is all in the timing!

To some extent, yes.

All the shots were taken during the day and mostly using the Canon 17 - 85 kit lens at f9 and all the shots that I was unhappy with were hand held shots.

Hopefully with a shutter speed greater than 1/90.

I did not use the remote because I figured the wind was causing me such a problem that it was just another bit of wire to vibrate in the wind and so just pressed the shutter release.

You could use velcro, bluetac, or an occy strap of some sort in order to secure this a little.

The deal here is that by even just touching the camera, you might introduce some vibrations. Way better to use a remote, or the camera's self timer, in order to eliminate all potential sources of vibrations.

So, in summary, find each lens's sweet spots, and try to work within those areas. Ascertain what the shutter speed will be, and work out how best to shoot with that shutter speed - handheld, or mono or tripod - and if necessary alter your means of triggering the camera.