D60 sharp portraits with flash

[jmamer]

Hi All!

I was shooting some informal portaits of the kid yesterday with the D60. I was using the 28-135 IS USM lens (my default lens) with EX420 flash. When I processed the shots I was somewhat surprised at how "soft" they appeared. Not way out of focus, but just not as sharp as I've gotten in bright sunlight. It could be mostly corrected with a judicious use of unsharp mask. However, I found it disconcerting that the pictures were so soft comming directly from the camera. I was shooting on P with the default flash sync of 60, at about 100mm with F5.6. in RAW mode and using Breeze Browser to convert to tiff-16.

I tried switching to arpeture priority and manually increasing the F-stop, but all I got was a flashing F-stop indicator.

Any pointers would be appreciated. Was it the lens? Maybe my effective DoF was too small for the portait (distance was 1.5m- 2.5m)? How can I get sharp portaits with flash but without studio lights? I guess I had high expectations because one of Canon's favorite promotional photographs is a studio portait that is ultrasharp.

If this is old hat and has been covered elsewhere I apologize in advance--just point me toward the thread.

thanks
john

[toycollector]

Set white balance to flash vs. using AWB.

I shot in P mode all the time until someone suggested the following and now this is how I always start my flash shots:

Set D60 to Manual (M) mode (not P), set aperture to F8 and speed to 1/125th. Drop speed down if pictures are too dark for you.

This setup works great with my D60 and 550EX. Hopefully it will work with your 420EX as well.

Good luck.

[jmamer]

toycollector wrote:
Set white balance to flash vs. using AWB.

I shot in P mode all the time until someone suggested the following and now this is how I always start my flash shots:

Set D60 to Manual (M) mode (not P), set aperture to F8 and speed to 1/125th. Drop speed down if pictures are too dark for you.

This setup works great with my D60 and 550EX. Hopefully it will work with your 420EX as well.

Good luck.


Wow. Great advice. I tried it. Stopping the 28-135 down to f8 made a huge difference. It still is not as sharp as my 85mm fixed focal length lens but
the f8 setting made a big difference.

Thanks!

[toycollector]

I think you'll find with D60 that almost every lens "shines" at F8. I try to stay between F8-F11 at all times unless I'm intentionally wanting to blur the backgound. I'll always open it up however, vs. increasing ISO speed. Much harder to clean up noise than it is to sharpen.....

[Spie]

I've just bought a D60 and have been dissapointed with flash photography using certain lenses. I picked the D60 because I have an EOS 3 & 5, 20-35, 28-105 and 75-300 Canon lenses. I also have a 550EX.

The first few pictures I took were with the 28-105 indoors using the built in flash and then the 550EX shot in program or fully auto mode. The results were not sharp and I thought I had a faulty camera. Yesterday and today I have taken some outdoor shots in natural light using the 20-35, which look pretty good. However, the poor results of the 28-105/flash shots bugged me, so after I found this forum I made a note of toycollectors flash setting (TCFS) and shot 6 near identical shots tonight using the 550EX. Here's a summary of my results :-

1 - 20-35 (set at 35) TCFS - very good sharpness.

2 - 20-35 (set at 35) Program - very good sharpness.

3 - 28-105 (set at 35) TCFS - very good sharpness.

4 - 28-105 (set at 35) Program - noticeably less sharp.

5 - 75-300 (set at 75) TCFS - excellent sharpness.

6 - 75-300 (set at 75) Program - very slightly less sharp.

I'm dissapointed that in Program mode using the 28-105 and flash sharpness suffers. Maybe it does on the EOS 3 but on the 7x5 prints I normally get I can't see notice. I am however delighted that your settings have made a difference Mr toycollector :)

Anyone have any other conclusions to draw from my (limited) results?

[adamsmith]

I think all of the disappointments here come from the P mode's automatic use of a wide aperature. Be mindful of what aperature it's using by reading the display in the viewfinder. Both the 28-135 and the 28-105 are SOFT wide open. They are not just a little soft either, they are downright blurry, esp at the edges. I've never gotten an acceptably sharp photo with my 28-105mm f/3.5-4.5 USM wide open.

-Adam

[Mark_Cohran]

I think your problem is with your lenses, and not with the camera. I consistently get very sharp results from the D60 when using prime lenses (85mm, 100mm macro, 135mm) and when using the L zooms (28-70L and 70-200L).