What could I have done to make this picture more crisp?

[VickynMickey]

I am very very new to photography, I am using a Canon Power Shot SD800 IS. I had the camera on Manual BW, Fine, 1600x1200, with no flash.
I like the picture allot but I was wondering if there was something I could have done differently to make it look more crisp?

 

[Furgus]

Well without seeing the picture I can only say one thing. Tripod. No handheld photo will get you the sharpness of a pciture taken on a tripod. Course you could use a photo editing application to sharpen it.

EDIT-picture came up Seriously use a tripod or if you can't change your shutter speed to as fast as you can get it.

 

[Master Mason]

try taking the picture in color and using a photo editing software to covert to B/W It is my understanding that they are superior that way.

Also, 1/15th of a second is a long time to hold a camera still so as furgus said, a tripod probably would have helped. Not sure what your f value would go to, but it was at 5.8, if you could have opened it up a little more you would have gotten a faster shutter speed.

 

[VickynMickey]

I am going to purchase a small tripod so that will help, I knew I should have gotten one with the camera. I didn't change the shutter speed, I was totally unaware that I could have( I am very very new to this as you can tell). I will play with the shutter speed and try again. Thanks for your help.

 

[VickynMickey]

What is the best Picture editing program out right now? I am currently only using Microsoft Picture It! older version

 

[Master Mason]

Best picture software.... That's a can of worms right there....

Probably the most used would be photoshop. The CS suite is what the majority of professionals use. I would guess they have 70+% of the market share. That however doesn't make it the best, and the full suite is a lot more program that most of us will ever need. I bought it, and in retrospect, really wish I had opted for the elements version as it has less of a learning curve.

There is a free one that is supposed to be pretty good, infraview or something like that. Groucho will way in soon with details on it.

You really just need to pick one and learn what it will do for you. If I was recomending it would be photoshop elements. Also technology moves quickly so if your using an older version, you could be pretty far behind the current technoloy.

 

[rolla01]

Yes, there are many factors in making the picture "crisp".
1. As mention, shutter speed/aperture (f-stop). I would say the "safe" shutter speed is around 1/60s. If you have IS on your camera, I would say 1/30 is safe, depends on how many beers that you had before taking the photo.
2. ISO value, if the shutter speed is lower than your safe speed, try raising the ISO value to get faster shutter speed. (But more noise for higher ISO).
3. Try using Photoshop to add "unsharpen" mask if the picture is kind of blurry. You can't do magic, but a bit sharper is better.

Just my 2 cents.

 

[rtphokie]

a better lens

 

[Master Mason]

a better lens

Kind of hard to change the lens on a SD800, but I guess where there's a way

 

[Anewman]

A couple EZ things not mentioned.

LIGHT is your friend.
It ALLOWS faster shutter speed that in turn reduces blur.
It ALLOWS a smaller aperture that in turn increases depth of focus.

Looks like some sunlight is hitting the strands of hair in the upper right hand corner, a white poster board can help illuminate the subject.

 

[Groucho]

It's probably worth shooting at a higher resolution, as well. Shooting at a lower resolution (1600x1200) is throwing away picture information. Even if you resample it to a smaller image later, at least the details is there - which can help with the resampling, and it also gives you more room to crop out extra detail.

A higher F-stsop (as used here) is a good idea as it gives you a greater depth of field, so more of the will be picture will be in focus. Still, for portraits, a very shallow DoF is often desired (with the eyes in razor focus and the rest of the face a little soft), but with a point and shoot, you're pushing your luck to hope for it to focus exactly where you want like that.

You also want a low ISO to minimize image noise, and a tripod is definitely of prime important if you're going to be shooting in lower light. Equally important to the tripod is for your subject to remain absolutely still.

For photo editing, it depends. The free Irfanview can do about 95% of what most people need Photoshop to do. It crops and resamples faster and easier than Photoshop and has a bunch of built-in filters (including unsharp mask and red-eye reduction) and can even use Photoshop filters. You can also do basic image manipulations, like change color levels, add text, etc.

It's not Photoshop and does not pretend to be, but you'd be amazed at just how much you can do without waiting for Photoshop's long startup time. Obviously if you want do things like edit out the crane behind Cinderalla Castle, you'll need a full-fledged photo editor.

Master Mason - I was just re-reading the thread to see if I missed anything and you're right, I did weigh in on it. Am I that predictable? Hey, I LOVE that program. I couldn't live without it. (Well, I could, but any photo tasks would be far more painful!) I highly, highly, highly recommend it. And I have absolutely nothing to do with the product itself so everyone is welcome to enjoy it guilt-free even if they don't like me!

 

[Master Mason]

Master Mason - I was just re-reading the thread to see if I missed anything and you're right, I did weigh in on it. Am I that predictable? Hey, I LOVE that program. I couldn't live without it. (Well, I could, but any photo tasks would be far more painful!) I highly, highly, highly recommend it. And I have absolutely nothing to do with the product itself so everyone is welcome to enjoy it guilt-free even if they don't like me!

No I just new that you really like it, and would be the best resourse to talk about it....

 

[manning]

Did you take this in portrait mode??

 

[Groucho]

No I just new that you really like it, and would be the best resourse to talk about it....

I do like it (heck, I love it) but I'm still learning new tricks about it all the time - that's one of the things that I enjoy about using it. Like the batch renaming - I never played with it before a week ago and now I find it tremendously useful. So many things that people post messages looking for help on can be done painlessly with it.

All this for a download size of less than a meg. How can you go wrong?

 

[VickynMickey]

All of your tips have been a great help. I need to continue to play around with the camera and its settings to see what I can accomplish. I did download the 30 day trial of Photoshop, just to take a look at it. I will have to take a look at the infra one that Groucho likes.
Thanks again for all of your help!

 

[VickynMickey]

Manning to answer your ?, No, the picture was taken in Manual with color setting at B/W

rtphokie, you can't add a lense to this camera (its very small and lightweight)

 

[jann1033]

All of your tips have been a great help. I need to continue to play around with the camera and its settings to see what I can accomplish. I did download the 30 day trial of Photoshop, just to take a look at it. I will have to take a look at the infra one that Groucho likes.
Thanks again for all of your help!

if you are not really great at editing already i'd download the free trial of photoshop elements 5. it's a lot easier than the regular photoshop...( i thought i would tear my hair out with that one ) and you probably got editing cds with your camera...i think it's arcsoft or something like that with canon...they would do a reasonably good job. what ever you decide to use, if it's photoshop or psp e5, you might want a tutorial book...i got "the missing manual" for e5 which i love, it's easy to understand and goes step by step for how tos.

not sure how your camera is set up but by going by my daughter's p & s( canon also) you could try the portrait setting or maybe even the macro . on my old film canon rebel i would use the macro setting for other close up stuff ( other than bugs/flowers i mean) although as of this second i can't remember what settings it put everything at ( thinking mostly of the low light) or put it to the auto setting and check the shutter etc if that shows up someplace on the lcd...( sorry haven't used a p & s in a while so don't know how much info they tell you)then put it where you want it setting wise but at least you know what the camera would have set it as.

imo it's not a bad picture...you can see her eyelashes etc and her eyes are in focus so it may be the lens is just a little less sharp so that type of shot might not work as well ?