kitacanon wrote in post #13194450
I'm sending you a private message....
You don't have public image editing permitted in your profile so i'm sending a PP image to you...
Your shooting is FINE as is your gear; the image is a bit underexposed (low contrast adds to the 'softness') and definitely needs some sharpening as you will see....
I agree with kitacanon. I downloaded the first image and processed it in Photoshop - the dog and things in its immediate vicinity looked fairly sharp, although it's a little hard to tell with a low resolution image. I'm thinking you may be seeing the soft images because of the relatively thin depth of field you got at f/4 plus lack of sharpening either in camera or in post processing. Assuming the first shot was taken from about 25 feet away, you would have had about 2.6 feet depth of field at 105mm and f/4. That covers the dog, judge, and probably part of the woman and not much else.
Try shooting a high contrast target in good light and see how that works. Use single shot autofocus and manually select the center focus point, shoot with wide open aperture, and preferably use a tripod, mirror lock up, and the time-delay automatic shutter release. A thick black line or cross on a white background would make a good target. Include something very detailed in the overall shot that's exactly on the same focus plane as the target so you can evaluate focus accuracy. One way to do this would be to take a page from a newspaper or magazine, put a thick black line across it, tape it to a wall, make sure you're exactly perpendicular to the wall, and shoot that with focus on the black line. If it's sharp, you're OK. If it's not, take a look here: https://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=857871
