XSi - how do I get clarity?

I'm having difficulties getting the clarity I think I should be getting out of my XSi. I bought it a few months back here on POTN, and am currently using it with a metal-mount 50mm f/1.8. I'm still pretty green at photography, so I'm assuming that's the problem here.

What I am experiencing is a distinct lack of clarity (pardon the pun) when viewing a photo zoomed in at all. I'll take a group picture of a dozen people and when viewing an individual person it looks like it was taken out of focus. The most recent thing I've been trying is replicating album art on rarer CD's. But I can't collect nearly the detail that is actually on the covers. In actual size it's okay, but anything more and there isn't much point in zooming in. Why?

I'll include a link to the full size image I took today. The cover took up probably 1/6 of the picture, so I cropped it down to this. I took it far enough away that distortion would not force me to cut off part of it. I took the same photo farther away and about twice as close, and they have about the same clarity.

http://outbri.be/imgs/​Cover.jpg
As stated above it was taken with a 50mm prime.
ISO 100
f/3.2
640/s
Auto focus.
WB set for sunlight.


I've narrowed the problem down to three things: the quality of the lens is such that I'll never get better clarity -- my settings were not the best for the picture -- I have no problem, nobody should be expected to get more clarity at this distance.

Does the collective knowledge of POTN have more options or is it one of these?

Thank you.

Judging from some of your Flickr shots, your 50mm is fine.

I'm going to go out on a limb here, but there's NO WAY this cover shot was done at ISO 100. Most of the detail is lost due to high ISO - IMHO. Maybe safety shift is on or something? But that's not ISO 100. And the lighting could be better which also causes problems.

And finally it may be cropped too much. Posting the original would help.

Yeah, that is now how ISO 100 should look like. f/3.2 is difficult to capture focus with a group that large and that separate from one anotehr. The 50mm lens should be pretty sharp but the photo looks a tad bit underexposed. I don't think you need 1/640 for that shot, even at that focal length. And for some reason, ISO 100 + f/3.2 + 1/640 should look WAY darker than how your photo came out, unless you used a flash.

Thanks for the replies.

int2str- Viewing the photo on my camera, it states it was taken at ISO 100 as well. It was taken in manual mode, so I don't think safety shift would have activated (not really sure how/when it works).
Should I upload a cr2 file or just export it with no editing?

dollei- What should my aperture have been? For a 2D object like this, I really have no idea what aperture and shutter speed to use. I tried some at f/11 and it seemed to turn out roughly the same.
The picture was taken outside on concrete, the sun was shining, but through thin clouds. So not full sunlight, but there was lots of light. No flash.

Yes, lets see the CR2...

That was taken outside? Yeah, upload the RAW file...f/11 should've been more than enough.

Are you certain there is sufficient quality within the original printed CD cover? I'm not aware that CD covers usually command such attention that the printing quality needs to be of the highest order. Assuming the original print on the CD cover is nothing special then taking a photograph of it will not magically make it crystal clear. Garbage in, garbage out.

As for what you can do to maximise the quality you do get....

- shoot in good light - bright and with the full colour spectrum;
- use a tripod to stabilise the camera and remove the risk of any movement between focusing and shooting;
- use Live View to perfect the focusing to the exact millimetre;
- use a remote release or self timer to avoid camera shake at the moment of shutter release;
- stop down to f/8 (but no more) to optimise lens sharpness without suffering diffraction softening;
- shoot raw at 100 ISO and get your exposure correct, or expose to the right and then adjust the exposure down to achieve an appealing visual impression. If you need to brighten things up in editing then you've exposed poorly.

It's a picture of a picture. No judgments about sharpness can be made by looking at a photograph of a badly printed photograph.

You are like the drunk who says, "Man, you better not drive home; you're so drunk you're getting blurry."

Wait....this is a picture of a picture?? -_-

Okay, maybe I need to take another picture to show my lack of clarity. This one doesn't seem to be working very well.

In any case, here's the cr2.
http://outbri.be/imgs/​IMG_2726.CR2

If you look at the picture below, you can see how clear it is. More than that level of clarity is visible in the album cover, but I don't know how to get it.
http://open.salon.com/​files/oc1247714395.jpg


For my picture, it looks like:
I need to go to around f/8 for sharp results.
I may have moved the camera a little from when it focuses
I might have been moving.

In this particular case, would a 300DPI scanner give me better detail?

Thanks for all your tips!

outbri, how about a picture of a soda can, deck of playing cards...anything that we call can relate to. I agree, a picture of an album cover doesn't work for lens evaluations. The concrete doesn't look too bad, for a raw image.

H20boy wrote in post #8815442
outbri, how about a picture of a soda can, deck of playing cards...anything that we call can relate to. I agree, a picture of an album cover doesn't work for lens evaluations. The concrete doesn't look too bad, for a raw image.

Yeah the concrete looks a heck of a lot nicer than the album cover. That looks like it came out of a 10 year old inkjet on plain paper.

The front guy is in focus. This is a depth of field issue. Smaller aperture or get everyone in the picture into the zone of focus.