Stopping my pictures from looking soft
Discussion
Hello,
I was out having a play with my camera last night and I was excited to get set up and take some pictures like the one I have attached below:
I am gutted to find that the majority of the pictures that I took look really soft, despite looking sharp on the LCD screen on the camera at the time.
The camera was on a tripod which was untouched , and the shutter was fired using a remote shutter cable so I am ruling out any camera shake.
My camera is a Nikon D3100 and I was using the kit 18-55vr lens. Camera was in manual mode with manual focus due to the darkness, with the focus set to infinity (ring turned all the way to the right). The above picture was a 30 sec exposure at f6.3.
Any ideas or pointers? Would it be at all possible for the viewfinder focus to be slightly out? Im just really disappointed at missing out on some really cracking pictures last night and I don't know how to remedy this!
David
I was out having a play with my camera last night and I was excited to get set up and take some pictures like the one I have attached below:
I am gutted to find that the majority of the pictures that I took look really soft, despite looking sharp on the LCD screen on the camera at the time.
The camera was on a tripod which was untouched , and the shutter was fired using a remote shutter cable so I am ruling out any camera shake.
My camera is a Nikon D3100 and I was using the kit 18-55vr lens. Camera was in manual mode with manual focus due to the darkness, with the focus set to infinity (ring turned all the way to the right). The above picture was a 30 sec exposure at f6.3.
Any ideas or pointers? Would it be at all possible for the viewfinder focus to be slightly out? Im just really disappointed at missing out on some really cracking pictures last night and I don't know how to remedy this!
David
Mirror lock was definitely off so that is something that I will try firstly.
VR was switched off on the lens.
Photos were taken in RAW.
Not sure if the lens goes soft at the far right end of the focus ring, I will give that a try. Problem was last night, I was in the moment (ie darkness) and I had nothing to focus on as a reference. Images looked sharp on the LCD screen so I had no reason to think this wasn't the case.
Cheers
David
VR was switched off on the lens.
Photos were taken in RAW.
Not sure if the lens goes soft at the far right end of the focus ring, I will give that a try. Problem was last night, I was in the moment (ie darkness) and I had nothing to focus on as a reference. Images looked sharp on the LCD screen so I had no reason to think this wasn't the case.
Cheers
David
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