Getting it sharp tutorial.

The most interesting release this month is the new AF-S NIKKOR 300mm f/4E PF ED VR. The lens is over half a kilo lighter than its predecessor, shorter by 75mm and feature Nikkor’s sports VR allowing the photographer to pan the camera whilst still benefitting from vibration reduction.
All of this sounds pretty good and that isn’t even the most interesting bit.
The eagle eyed amongst you will have noticed the PF in its name meaning Phase Fresnal. This is a new lens element that uses the photo diffraction phenomenon to reduce chromatic aberrations. This system is effective with less glass elements than ED requires thus allowing the lens to be smaller.
On the downside, strong light entering the lens will cause ring-shaped coloured flares to occur. To combat this Nikon’s Capture NX-D has PF flare control to fix this in post-production but for those who chose to use other software this might be a bit off putting. Before we get all hysterical though it will be worth seeing how much of a problem this really is.
Petapixel.com have a great introduction of this lens and explain the PF lens element well so if you want to understand that.
For more in depth information on this lens read the Nikon blog.
The Nikon AF-S NIKKOR 300mm f/4E PF ED VR Lens is available for preorder for £1639. However if you don’t mind a bit more size and weight, the outgoing lens is only £709, less than half the price.

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The Nikkor AF-S DX NIKKOR 55-200mm f/4-5.6G ED VR II must be getting that shrinking feeling. Nikkor has revised the popular sidekick of their 18-55mm kit lens by reducing it in size and weight making it even more portable.
Still featuring VR to improve hand held shooting and a ED glass element to reduce chromatic aberrations, this is a good lens for someone who wants to build upon their DX DSLR’s kit lens.
You can preorder the NIKKOR 55-200mm VR II Lens for £279.99 However with the older lens being only £123.75 you must really want that shorter lens.
Also worth thinking about, if you want a do it all lens, is the even more versatile NIKKOR AF-S 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR II. At £434 it is double the price but it is higher quality and covers the wide angle side as the ultimate holiday lens for DX DSLR’s. This lens also has a cheaper father lens
<a href=”t.co/4RmIIXa66N”>Nikon blog at £179.

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If you joined me in wondering how long it would take till Nikon brought out a touch screen DSLR. Well wonder no more!
Introducing the new D5500, the world's smallest, lightest, and slimmest digital SLR camera. Oh and slightly more relevantly, the first Nikon digital SLR camera to be equipped with a touch screen vari-angle monitor. The new screen will be useful for selecting focus points in live view or film and may well improve menu navigation which we will know when some hands on tests come up.
That aside there isn’t much else to talk about. Nearly all of the internals are the same as the outgoing D5300. The ISO now goes from ISO 100 to 25600 but this only seems to be renaming Hi1 and 2 with their equivalent ISO.
You can read all of the details on the Nikon blog should you wish to know more.
The black Nikon D5500 with 18 - 55 mm VR II Kit lens is available for preorder at £719 or as a red body only for £639.
The outgoing Nikon D5300 with 18-55mm VR II is still holding its price at £606, unsurprising with the modest spec changes but still gives you a spare hundred quid to spend on filters should you be thinking of buying an entry level DSLR.

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The annual onslaught of compact cameras has thankfully been spread a little as so far only the S and L range are seeing new cameras added to their lines.
The S3700 bucks the trend further by hardly changing anything. Bosting a slim, stylish yet light weight body hiding all of the same features of the practically identical S3600 (20.1mp CCD sensor 8X zoom etc) with added wifi and NFC. The wifi allows you to share your images with your Android smart device for easy wireless back up of instant sharing on social media.
The S2900 is a cut back version with a shorter 5X zoom and no wifi.
You can read about them both on the Nikon blog.
You can get yourself a Nikon COOLPIX S3700 for £99 whilst the outgoing Nikon COOLPIX S3600 with a case, memory card and mini tripod is £92.99. Both are available in a mind boggling array of colours. The Nikon Coolpix S2900 is inexplicably only currently available in red and even more so is priced at £96 making you wonder why bother? The older model the S2800 is twenty quid cheaper and if you can spot the difference then you win.

The Nikon L32 and 31 are aimed at those just getting into photography. With the aim of making photography simple and worry free for the new photographer these cameras are simple and basic with their maximum 5x zoom. Having any optical zoom is a step above a mobile phone camera and dedicated controls should make for hassle free use. The L31 differs in a lower resolution CCD sensor dropping from 20-16mp.
The biggest benefit for both of this cameras is the use of regularly available AA batteries. SO no matter where you are you can find power for your camera where others might find themselves struggling with power adapters or even for a plug in the first place!
The Nikon COOLPIX L31 at only £69 won’t break the bank but with the higher spec outgoing Nikon Coolpix L30 at the same price
As with the S series Coolpix Nikon have lumped the L’s together in one Nikon blog, worth a read for more details.


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Well it isn’t out yet. Nikon has taken the odd move of letting us know it is doing something. Usually we just find out when it’s out or via a leak. The firmware update will allow support for the new Nikon Camera Control 2. This software allows you to take control of your camera through your computer as a remote control. This is very useful in studio with DSLR’s and has clearly been demanded for the lighter weight mirrorless cameras. You can read more about this on the Nikon blog.


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For a subject that is so important to so many we haven’t revisited sharpness in your photography since June 2011.
We will now revisit this subject, improve upon it with new technology and techniques to help make your photographs as sharp as they need to be.

Getting it all sharp

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Sharpness is just another thing to be thinking about when you are shooting and more often than not it is only something you find out about when you have your film developed or you have uploaded your images to your computer and you see these little fuzzy gremlins on the outlines and hard edges of your image.
Getting consistently sharp images is one thing we would all like to do in our day to day photography. Even when you are aiming for a blurring technique like motion blur, zoom blur or an intentionally out of focus look, you will still need to use these techniques to make your shot only blur the way and where you want it.

Identify your requirements

This is the question you need to ask yourself before even walking out of the house then repeat over and over again till you come up to clicking that shutter: “What do I need?”
What kit are you going to need? Is your subject likely to move? If so is there enough light? Am I going to need a strobe? Is there room and is it practical to use a tripod? Is it cold outside? What support is there? Am I going to need food and/or water?
Your needs as a photographer stretch way beyond what is needed to take a photograph and although not directly related to sharpness can all work against you when it comes to hitting that shutter if ignored.

Choose your kit

Having identified your requirements you will be looking at your kit bag and trying to decide if you have everything you need. How flexible do you need to be? Can you stand to lose some kit in favour of a lighter bag or making room for something more useful?
Staying with kit it is worth taking a look at what will help you make a sharper image. If you are rolling out there with a low quality lens, in poor light, with no flash or a camera that can go to high ISO then you are going to struggle to get very sharp images.
Although there are many exceptions to the rule, high quality (read expensive) lenses are the key to sharp photographs. However on their own they are useless if not used with good technique. Get the technique right then if you still feel the need to you can buy extra image quality with good glass. The cheapest way to do this in our eyes is go get a Nikkor 50mm f1.8 AF-D second hand and watch all of your good work come together. Even cheaper still, go out and buy a tripod. Steady images are sharp images and a bargain tripod is better than none at all. For more sharp lenses you might be interested to read Ken Rockwells top 10 lenses to see what he has found to work for him.
Lastly, no matter what you have, make sure it is clean. Dust and finger prints make for softer images and a clean lens means less time spent with the clone tool later so win, win. Dust on your image sensor is more likely to show up in an image and less likely to cause softening unless at wide apertures but still having your sensor cleaned periodically will only help matters.
Filters can have a positive or a negative effect on image sharpness. It stands to reason that the more glass you put in front of your camera, the softer the images will become. If you are shooting a close up subject, do you need that UV lens on? It could be hampering your work. Conversely it might be a close ally on a landscape on a hazy day, cutting through the scattered UV light giving you a clearer image. Either way use the highest quality filters you can afford  to minimise their negative impact.
Even if you just have a kit lens there is allot you can do to make your images sharper through a little understanding.

Set up

There are a number of things you can do to make your images sharper just by setting your camera up for optimal sharpness.
First off select the highest image quality you can. Any post production in a jpeg image will cause detail loss so consider shooting in raw then convert to jpeg with the more powerful software on your computer. If you are shooting in jpeg remember that long exposure noise reduction and other in camera processing will reduce image quality slightly so turn these off.
How good is your AF working? If your photographs are out of focus there is no way they will be sharp. If your camera is missing the mark you might need to compensate for it either manually or if your camera allows it you can set it to go slightly beyond or closer than what it thinks is correct.
Now consider what shutter speed you can safely go down to. This is very subjective but as a base rule, on a static subject, you want a shutter speed faster than the length of your lens.
So for example a 50mm lens can go all the way down to a shutter speed of 1/50 whereas a harder to control 600mm lens is restricted to 1/600. These are not hard and fast. If you are very steady of hand you can dip below a bit, conversely if you find your camera a bit heavy or other outside forces such as wind are creating movement, you might need to go faster.
Other factors that can help you out here are lenses with VR or using a strobe. A strobe gives you more light so allowing you to use a shorter shutter speed. VR or vibration reduction effectively gives you up to 4 stops faster shutter speed, allowing you to dip under your normal minimum.  

Your technique

Technique for shooting is very dependent on your subject and what is suitable to your sitation. We will take a simple portrait as an example. A poor example as it happens as you don’t want things to sharp in portraits but we will go with it anyway.
Dragging your camera from your bag, you shoot from the hip, capturing your subject adequately enough but notice things are far from sharp. You already prepped your kit before coming out so you are going to find more ways of improving the clarity of your subject.
Stop down the aperture
The first thing you can try is stopping down the aperture to somewhere between f8-16. It will help if you experiment with this to find what aperture your lens is sharpest. To wide things get soft, to narrow and chromatic aberrations slip in, making edges fuzzy. This also gives you more depth of field to play with so you get more of your subject clear and in focus.
Stance
We have now created a new problem. Your cowboy like shooting technique is now causing blur from camera shake.
You need to sort out the way you stand and hold your camera. 'The Hot Shoe Diaries – Big Light from Small Flashes' by Joe McNally has some good hints on some clever techniques to hold your camera to minimise shake. You will also find advice in many other books and online but I particularly like the way this guy writes. It really keeps you interested unlike many other text books .
The most basic stance is to grip your SLR camera is probably the one you really use anyway but lets make sure everything is being done right.
Stand so your legs are roughly shoulder width apart with one foot a half pace forwards with a bend in your leading knee.
Hold your camera with your right hand on the grip and taking your left hand under the lens barrel. Now pull your elbows into your body and press your eye up to the viewfinder. This give you 3 points of contact on the camera, reducing shake compared to just trying to use your hands. The tight elbows reduce the length of your arms so any shake at your body won’t be amplified as much as it travels down arms. This supports the weight in a balanced way and allows your fingers the best access to your cameras controls.
Now relax and adjust till you are comfortable.
If at all possible don’t shoot with live view unless you are using a rig as this forces you to hold the camera out at arms length further reducing the control you have over it.
You can make yourself more stable in a seated position and laying down. They don’t offer much flex but the trade off stability is worth it.
Use a support
Undoubtedly the best way to steady your camera is to place it on something that isn’t going to move. Balancing your camera on a wall or table will have this effect but a tripod is the best. It will securely hold the camera during the exposure and will allow you to adjust the angle and height of your camera.
It is important to note that when using a tripod that VR should be switched off  if it is a feature of your lens as otherwise it will start doing some weird and wonderful things.
If you are in a confined space, traveling light or surrounded by people like a busy street, a tripod may not be suitable so maybe consider a monopod. Lighter and staying within your personal space, it helps reduce camera movement whilst not being intrusive.
ISO
You can claw back some shutter speed by raising the ISO sensitivity of your camera. Big ISO means you can get away with smaller apertures in low light. The trade-off though is more noise. On newer and high end cameras this is less of a problem as noise control improves but it is still undesirable. Raising the ISO is good in a pinch but we would suggest shooting at the lowest ISO you can comfortably use.
Strobe
Adding more light will obviously reduce the shutter speed needed to correctly expose your image, so reducing the time for movement to take place. On the down side it will cause your background to underexpose unless you are using allot of speed lights (or one really big one!?!). You can combat this by using rear curtain. The camera will correctly expose your background then pop the flash to freeze your subject. This will have some blur for where your subject was but will give a sharp representation of where it ended up. The added movement may even be beneficial.
Although not restricted to strobes, the quality of the light effects sharpness. Soft hazy light on a cloudy day will produce softer images than harsh direct sun light on a summers day. Pick and chose your light source for the results you need.
Back focusing
We mentioned focus compensation earlier but it’s worth mentioning briefly here. Back focusing is where you focus out to your subject till their face is in focus and keep going till their nose goes out of focus then come back again. This way more of their face will be in focus.
This takes away the possibility of an autofocus camera to focus out till the point you are pointing at is in focus then stopping so you have some nice in focus air in front of your subject and the tip of their nose. On modern AF cameras you probably won’t really use this technique till you use a very short DOF lens such as macro.

Post process

Extra sharpness can be dragged out of your images in post processing.
Manipulation of the clarity and contrast bars in the RAW image editing window can make a big difference. Further contrast based contrast increases can be achieved with curves.
Simply using the sharpen brush can allow you to touch up an isolated area whilst preserving other out of focus areas. Selective sharpening can also be achieved within layer masks.
A popular technique at the moment is to use unsharp mask on the luminosity in lab colour so only sharpening the highlights. This can be more subtle whilst giving stronger results.
Don’t be tempted to go too far with this though, with sharpness comes noise and other over sharpening gremlins that will leave your image looking over processed.

If you have any more ideas or just want to get into the discussion, then head onto the poll or share it here.
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