There are few things in the life of a photographer that bring more dismay than an off-focus image, especially when they only took one or two shots of their subject. It is far worse, of course, when the shot cannot be replicated. Images that may look great on the camera’s LCD appear far too soft or mis-focused when pulled up on the computer monitor and the photographer is left with a heavy heart and a cluttered mental slate. It can be a difficult thing to deal with, but it can be avoided with a change of habits and a little technical know how! In this article I’m not going to go over every single technique that is used to help photographers achieve sharper images, but I am going to give you a list of techniques that I have learned through trial and error that have greatly helped me. Under every tip and technique will be a discussion of it – I hope that this article will help you on future shoots!

You might need to break out your manual for this tip, but it is definitely well worth the effort to learn it. So many times we hear “you’re smarter than your camera!” but when we’re starting out and staring at the dozens of buttons and countless menus it can be difficult to believe. What exactly are focus points? Well, without branching this off into another topic all on it’s own and trying to keep the technical babble to a minimum (for this article), they’re the little squares you see when you look inside your viewfinder. Depending on your brand, camera, and settings, the position and amount of squares will be different, but here’s one example:

You may notice whenever you squeeze the shutter half way to focus, one or more of these little squares will illuminate red and look like this (note: the illuminated square will be different depending on your situation) :

The most basic but best explanation I can give without divulging into a separate discussion is that these little squares determine which part of the image is going to be the most focused upon. To help me illustrate focus points, I recruited my amphibian A – Team : Avedon, Arbus, Adams, Atkins and Atget. I set the camera to select the focus point automatically and this was the result – (note: the white square indicate the area of which focus point had been selected)

So, I like wood grain as much as the next girl, but I was trying to photograph my frogs, which as you can see are nothing more than blurred shapes in the forefront of the frame. Clearly, this is an issue (amphibians are surprisingly vain). I can’t blame the camera too much, though – it was looking for a point of high contrast and good lighting. So here’s a shot of me setting the focus point manually – me telling the camera where to focus.

Now we can see Atget in focus – front and center!

So instead of leaving the area of focus up to the camera, I’ve taken control and have told it where I want the focus to be.

When you allow your  camera to set your focus points, you’re essentially, compositional elements aside, trying to get your camera to pick where you want the emphasis of your image placed. Your camera is bright, but it has no idea that you want to focus on your subject’s eyes instead of their shoes. Learn to set your focus points manually and you will start to see improvement on the focus and sharpness of your subject (especially when coupled with the following tips) I won’t lie or fluff it up– it can take some getting used to when you’re in the middle of a shoot and you’re trying to move that blasted little red highlight around to the right square, but keep practicing and it will become second nature.

If you don’t shoot with a tripod, you are going to be the support for your camera. If you are shooting with your aperture set wide open, steadying yourself is absolutely key to learn and practice. When shooting wide open, your depth of field is exceptionally shallow – meaning that moving just an inch can throw your focus off to another part of the image. Try it – look through the viewfinder with your lens set to manual focus with a wide aperture and slowly rock back and forth – watch as the your area of focus quickly blurs as another part becomes in focus. If you are quickly leaning in or out while you shoot, you could be throwing off your focus. Before you squeeze the shutter – exhale. Don’t become tense, but instead strong and sure. Hold your camera steady and let your other hand support your lens from the bottom – do not put your hand on the top of the lens as the weight of it will force your lens downwards. If you need to, lean against something – a tree, a pillar, a wall, whatever is available to you. Often times when I have a long macro in the field and no tripod, I will set the barrel of my lens on my knee for extra support (if I’m in a sitting position, of course) If you are shooting with a long lens that does not have IS, this will prove to be an invaluable piece of information time and time again. If I’m wary about how steady my hand is, I’ll take this next tip into consideration.

Now, I’m not a proponent of pointing the camera in a certain direction and just firing off dozens of shots and hoping you’ll get one that works. But, having had a subject in front of my camera that was fleeting and I knew I had to capture, and having access to a digital camera that can store hundreds of photos on one card…well I definitely support shooting multiple frames to ensure sharpness for fleeting moments and fleeting subjects. Having said that, when you really start to learn your gear inside and out and become very familiar with how it works and how you can push not only it’s limits, but your own, you will start finding that you can capture that fleeting moment confidently with just one shot…and sometimes that’s all you’ll be able to get before the moment fades forever.

Here’s the scenario: I’d always wanted to photograph a dragonfly, but they always escaped me. They’re not at all camera loving like damselflys and often shy away from the camera (the ones that I meet, anyway) So you can imagine my absolute delight, excitement, and nervousness,when I’m walking through a nature trail and see a giant blue dragonfly sitting right in front of me. I quickly dialed in my settings and held the finder up to my eye, firing away. I was using a rather long lens and, as you may know, shooting with a long lens can have it’s own set of obstacles, especially when the particular lens is heavy and does not have any form of image stabilization. I wanted to photograph this dragonfly to the best of my ability, and that meant photographing it with as much sharpness and detail as I could, no matter what my lens. I did not want to change composition until I was absolutely sure that I had the shot – so I took about 10-12 consecutive photographs of the dragonfly to compensate for my excitement and, I’m sure, subconsciously shaking hands. You might be wondering why I didn’t just take a shot then peel away from the finder and look at my LCD – this was a once in a lifetime (it felt at that moment) shot opportunity for me. I wanted to get as many shots as I could before it slipped away. I’m very happy that I did because a couple of the shots were blurred, not on the LCD’s view, but on the monitor there was a definite camera shake problem. However, because I kept shooting while I calmed myself down and steadied my hand beneath a heavy lens, I got the sharp photo I desired. Here’s the difference of two photos taken split moments between each other and a crop of them to see the detail. (Let’s refer back to steadying ourselves, too)

Note how the zoomed out view looks rather acceptable – certainly if we glanced at it on an LCD we might believe that it’s sharper than it actually is, but closer inspection says otherwise.

I can’t imagine how dismayed I’d have been if, in my excitement, I’d only took one photo of my subject and it was the image on top. I may have taken up a little more space on my card, but I got the shot I’d wanted for months on end. But how did I know that I nailed it without pulling it up on my computer?

Note: For those of you using cameras that take cards that tend to have slower write speeds (SD, XD) make every shot count. If you fire off too many frames your card may not be able to keep up and your camera will lock up and refuse to let you take another photo until it finishes writing files (and you could lose your subject during that time – its happened to me before! I was using an SD on this shoot above!). Keep an eye on that available frames number in the bottom right hand corner of your viewfinder.

How can we know, without going home and pulling up our images on a large computer monitor, that we nailed our sharpness? Looking at the LCD. And by that I do not mean pressing the playback button and glancing at that small representation of our image – that can be very deceieving. Instead, playing back that image and then zooming in on the area we set our focus point on. Here’s a link to an on-site article I wrote on how to do this (Canon & Nikon users)

Quick Tip 003 : Zooming in On Playback Images

Sometimes, we won’t have time to check for sharpness, and like I mentioned on the last tip, thats where our gear knowledge and experiences are really put to the test. But if you’re in a slow moving, low stress situation and have the moment to check the image you just took, by all means do it. But what if you’re photographing a client? If you memorize those buttons and can press them quickly then your clients will hardly notice you glancing at your LCD and zooming in on your last shots. You may have to put your ego or nervousness aside and just take a moment to exhale and check the image – if it’s in focus, great. Continue on. If it isn’t, then just say “Hey, lets try that last pose one more time.” I’d rather ask my client to repeat a pose and then gain confidence that I was able to capture them well (which creates a positive vibe during the shoot) instead of creating an atmopshere of inner turmoil knowing I didn’t capture them well enough and dread post processing. Just take a moment and breathe – look at the shot and see if it is in the range of sharpness you were aiming for. This can save you a lot of head and heart aches later on.

This was definitely key for me when I was photographing that dragonfly. I was using a heavy lens with a long focal length that had no form of stabilization and needed to get a fast shutter speed to avoid visible camera shake. (Espescially since I was so excited and nervous) You may have heard of the rule of thumb that your minimum shutter speed should be the focal length of your lens. For example, 50mm = 1/50^th of a second. Rules of thumb aren’t set in stone as some of us have steadier hands than others and our situations vary so often when shooting (standing, sitting, laying down), but it may be a good starting point for you. My recommendation is to practice and see how steady your hand is and find what works best for you and what results you can achieve at different settings. Because I was shooting with a long and heavy lens and wanted to really make sure I nailed the shot I made sure I had a high shutter speed.

Obviously, these aren’t all the tips out there for achieving sharper images. I’m sure as time goes on I’ll have more articles and more tips on the subject, but I think I’ve left you with some homework – study manually changing your focus points, your stance, playing back images, and paying attention to your settings. Most of all – practice. Sometimes there’s no better teacher than experience. Go out and shoot! :)