KristyM wrote in post #16953299
Hello
I have a canon t3i and just bought a canon 85mm f/1.8 and went out to take some portraits but the pictures are not as crisp as I thought they were. I shot in Raw for all of them and also not in automatic I used Av, and Tv settings ( still learning). I opened them in Lightroom and when I zoom in they are blurry and even after I think they look a little fuzzy, not crisp. I have no idea why. Can someone please explain to me how I can take crisp pictures with my camera or if I am doing anything wrong?
Heya,
Looks like it's slightly front focusing to me. To confirm that, use LiveView and let it focus with that and take an image. See if it's razor sharp. For your AF points (hit the little + magnifying glass to open this option), I would select the center point and aim for the eyes. Even at F1.8, a full body portrait like that, focused on the nose/eyes should gather everything in focus fairly well. So try that to rule out that all focus points are just grabbing a knee or a finger, or grass, etc, ensure it focuses on the eyes/face. Lastly, I see you're shooting a shutter speeds like 1/160s over and over. While this is ok, I find it often still can introduce out of focus shots like this, because of natural body sway, breathing, etc, with thin depth of field, it's easy to simply move a hair and you end up softer than it was when it first nailed focus. Speed it up a bit, add some ISO to make up the exposure, the T3i can handle some ISO (400~800 is fine here, even 1600 is very doable without tons of noise). And play with your focus to exposure technique (don't use AI servo here, I would use one shot for the AF drive). Focus once on her face, to get the lens in relative focus. Release the AF. Then hit the AF and exposure in one motion so that it fine tune nails focus and immediately exposes. Compare this to just letting LiveView do the focus.
I would shoot these in AV personally, aperture wide open, or slightly stopped down depending on how you want your depth of field (I usually shoot the 85 F1.8 at F2 personally), with ISO set to 400~800, with +2/3rds exposure compensation. See if your shutter is faster than 1/400s, etc. If it is, great, get to shooting and try the above methods.
Very best,