Problem with image sharpness

I guess I'd better say outright that I'm not buying the inadequate depth of field argument.
However, you could try a technique which I just learned about to address this if indeed it is a cause. I didn't believe it worked until I tried it myself.

Take the image at 18 mm and then crop and enlarge it to the required size. The final DoF will be greater than if you had framed it at a longer focal length in the first place. The proviso is that you are not printing so large that resolution becomes a problem.

xarqi wrote in post #16620288
I guess I'd better say outright that I'm not buying the inadequate depth of field argument.
However, you could try a technique which I just learned about to address this if indeed it is a cause. I didn't believe it worked until I tried it myself.

Take the image at 18 mm and then crop and enlarge it to the required size. The final DoF will be greater than if you had framed it at a longer focal length in the first place. The proviso is that you are not printing so large that resolution becomes a problem.

The dof is pretty thin, he focused at the top of the speaker, and down at an angle. It is quite obvious that with a thin dof shot across the top would make the focal plane angle away from the bottom and thus render it soft.

xarqi wrote in post #16620288
I guess I'd better say outright that I'm not buying the inadequate depth of field argument.
However, you could try a technique which I just learned about to address this if indeed it is a cause. I didn't believe it worked until I tried it myself.

Take the image at 18 mm and then crop and enlarge it to the required size. The final DoF will be greater than if you had framed it at a longer focal length in the first place. The proviso is that you are not printing so large that resolution becomes a problem.

The anti-Brenizer method, a.k.a. the crop factor method. Exact same reason a crop camera has less DoF than a FF camera with the same framing.

Aside from what others mentioned here, assuming you are using an IS lens with a tripod, you should make sure to turn the IS off.

Does the 1100D have an A-Dep option on the mode dial? Try that and see if it sharpens it up. Or if not, try Green Box mode (not joking) to see if it's better for you. As p & s users are looking for sharp images as they learn, this mode is designed with a little more DOF than the semi auto/manual modes. it's a great image but you should have shot the pair. As a Hi Fi buff, what make are they, and why is there no tweeter- just 2 dogs? I mean woofers.

Colin Glover wrote in post #16624247
Does the 1100D have an A-Dep option on the mode dial? Try that and see if it sharpens it up. Or if not, try Green Box mode (not joking) to see if it's better for you. As p & s users are looking for sharp images as they learn, this mode is designed with a little more DOF than the semi auto/manual modes. it's a great image but you should have shot the pair. As a Hi Fi buff, what make are they, and why is there no tweeter- just 2 dogs? I mean woofers.

That mode isn't designed with more DOF than the other modes, it just tries to give the photographer a tool to figure out what aperture to use by choosing which objects should be in focus. It is designed to be a crutch for those with less experience around control of DOF vs those that know what apertures they want for their subject material.

Thanks for all the suggestions. I'm going to borrow one of the better Canon POS and try everything suggested here when I get some time and see what results I can get. Also going to borrow a more upmarket Canon DSLR and do a comparison.

The speaker is Red Spade Audio HE2 - this is one of my own designs. One thing I didn't manage to capture so well is that the "top dog" isn't a woofer but a waveguide that houses a compression driver as the tweeter.

From looking at the picture, I'm going to say it's a DOF problem.

Too often, people consider the DOF to be from the point of focus and rearward. Nope! For all practical purposes, DOF is split equally front and back of the actual focus point. So, by focusing on the closest edge of the speaker, the wood grain near the far edge of the speaker is clearly not sharp.

I strongly urge the OP to 'play with' the linked DOF calculator below, paying attention to the 'near limit' and 'far limit' values for a specific subject distance.

http://www.dofmaster.c​om/dofjs.html

Snowyman wrote in post #16620282
Tripod and focus stacking.

This will work. Any software with layers can do this.

Thanks, that's very handy, bookmarked.

Focus stacking ... learnt something new today already!

Why not try a 50mm 1.8 or the 40mm pancake cheap and OK IQ for the bucks in my opinion.