Soft photo problem??

[ben306]

I noticed a number of my photos appear to be quite 'soft', How can I 'shapen' them up? Whats the best settings on my Camera or is this more an issue of being limited with not having a DSLR.

I do alot on my photography using the 'Apature' mode, should I experiment with other stuff?

Also some photos appear 'noisy' now Im have been leavingthe ISO on auto, so is it time to start messing with these settings aswell?

[Marcus]

I am sure someone will correct me if I am wrong! But you need to be shooting in a higher aperture around the 9-11 mark maybe to get a sharper picture, as for ISO the lower the number i.e 100 equals less noise

[LM]

ISO = Keep it nice and low unless you're in desperate need of a faster shutter speed, like in a museum thats not got great lighting, but where you cant take a tripod so you have to hand-hold. With your ISO being on auto, it might knock it about as it see's fit, which might be where your noise is coming from.

As for your soft photo issue, no photo is absolutely pin sharp from the camera, and can always be improved with editing in photoshop.

As Marcus mentioned, it might be that you've got your aperture set quite low (wide aperture) so your area of sharp focus is minimised. With a wide aperture (low number), you get a very pin sharp point of focus on something your subject, but if you don't get it bang on, it throws the whole lot out of focus/soft.

For taking portaits of people/animals, or flowers etc, where I want to really make the subject 'pop' from the background, I used a very low aperture, something around f/2.8, maybe even lower, and sometimes as low as my lens will go (wide open)

You might shoot something at f/4 and it may not be sharp because it needed a shallower aperture to allow for a greater area of sharp focus (higher number).

I've picked up a few rules/tips that i've found have helped me out:-

Portraits (people/animals etc), flowers, close up shots etc = low F-stop (f/1.8 - f/4)

For normal snap shots, random photos, when you can't be arsed being all geeky - middle ish F-stop (f/5.6-f/7.1)

For scenary, landscape, sunset/sunrise shots etc, high F-stop (f/11-f/22+)

I've always found that by following them, and categorising them by subject, it's always given me a bit of a 'headstart' when i've been unsure on where to start, especially whilst I was learning the ways of the togging back at the beginning.

Hope some of that helps.