Why Is Sharpness In Photography So Important? Hi, and a very warm welcome to Episode 163 of the Photography Explained podcast. I’m your host, Rick, and in each episode, I will try to explain one photographic thing to you in plain English, in less than 27 minutes (ish), without the irrelevant details. I’m a professionally qualified photographer based in England with a lifetime of photographic experience, which I share with you in my podcast.
Here is the answery bit
Sharpness in photography relates to how the detail within a composition is captured and conveyed. A photographer should aim to produce the sharpest image every time. Sharpness can be used creatively, with the subject sharp and other elements in the composition less sharp. Image capture technique, camera settings, gear, and image processing all influence the sharpness of a photograph.
OK – that was the answery bit.
So sharpness is influenced by image capture technique, composition, camera settings, gear, and processing.
You can listen to the episode here
Or carry on reading – up to you.
I will go through these one by one. Makes sense!
But sharp images are what we want. Always. If you are doing landscape photography, portrait photography, wedding photography, architectural photography, ok any kind of photography, you need to get the sharpest photos you can take every time.
And yes, there will be times when you want to create soft images, I get that, but most of the time, sharp images are what we are after.
Image capture technique
I start with the taking of the photo. And how the photo is taken. And more importantly, what is in the photo that you are taking?
Composition
As the photographer, you have the first say in sharpness when making a composition. Yes, it starts with you.
What do you want to be sharp in your composition? That depends on what you are taking a photo of, why and who for.
If it is just for you, you can do whatever you want. If, like me, you are taking photos of buildings for clients, you need everything to be tack sharp. I will come onto that later. Tack sharp, that is.
When I am taking photos, I spend most of my time on the composition, as this is what people will be looking at, right? It makes sense to do this and spend time, thought and care on getting your best composition.
The composition will influence the sharpness of a photo, where you put the main subject in relation to other things such as the foreground, middle ground and, background, and other elements of the composition.
You want the subject to be as sharp as you can. The rest is down to what you want from a photo.
Creativity
You can use sharpness creatively. The main way is by having the subject matter sharp and, say, the background blurry. Or the foreground. You can use sharpness to emphasise the subject creatively.
How to take sharp photos
The technical side of things. How you take sharp photos.
Taking photos handheld
You need your camera to be still to get sharp photos. Use a fast enough shutter speed to get the sharpest photo you can. The rule of thumb is that your shutter speed needs to be faster than the reciprocal of the focal length. In English, if you are taking a photo with a 200mm focal length, you need a shutter speed that is 1/200th second or faster.
Image stabilisation kicks in on more modern cameras and lenses, allowing you to use slower shutter speeds and still get sharp photos.
And how you hold the camera and how you take a photo will affect sharpness. Check out episode 3, How To Take A Photo?, for more. And also episode 151, How To Take The Best Photos That You Can Every Time.
Get this lot right, and have a much better chance of getting a sharp photo.
Or use a tripod, which is what I do.
A tripod gives your camera a stable base, allowing you to use slower shutter speeds and lower ISOs. Or to take photos that you were going to take handheld in normal light conditions. I find that I get better compositions quicker using a tripod.
And to take this to the next level, once your camera is on a tripod and you have selected your composition, sorted the exposure and all that good stuff, don’t just stab the shutter release button. Use the self-timer built into your camera, ensuring that your camera is dead still when the photo is taken.
This is what I do.
Keep your gear clean.
You need to keep your lens clean, the front and rear lens elements, that is. If you have a load of gunk on your lens (first use of the word gunk on the podcast), what chance do you stand?
And you need a clean sensor. Gunk on your sensor, and again, no chance.
If you have a load of gunk on your lens or on your sensor, not only do you have no chance of getting sharp photos, you don’t deserve to get sharp photos!! And while we are at it, keep the lens body and the camera body clean. And everything else.
Look after your kit, and keep things clean. Your gear will thank you and repay you. And that has given me an excellent idea for a future episode; the working title is “How I Look After My Camera Gear”. Yes, I have just added it to my list of episodes.
Focus
Focus on your subject. If it is a person, focus on the eyes. If it is a building, focus on the elevation or the main feature. And then think about what else is in focus or not. I will cover aperture shortly. But generally, you will focus on the thing you are taking a photo of, or somewhere before, to get the depth of field you want.
You need to get a sharp focus on the subject; that is job number one. And then, you can think about the rest of the composition.
And you need to select the correct focus mode for what you are taking photos of.
Camera settings
The camera settings you use will also influence sharpness. Of course they will.
Aperture
The larger the aperture and the smaller the aperture value, the less depth of field. This means less of a photo from front to back that is sharp.
The smaller the aperture, the larger the aperture value, the greater the depth of field. And yes, this means more from front to back that is sharp in a photo.
You can consciously control how much of a photo is sharp by changing the aperture.
Sweet spot
Every lens has a sweet spot. Every lens has an aperture which gives the sharpest image.
In general terms, if you use the maximum aperture, you will probably lose some sharpness. It might not be too significant, and if you are taking photos of people and the softness at maximum aperture is only around the edges, then this is not a problem, is it? But when photographing a building interior, say, softness around the edges would be a problem. And there are other potential issues with the minimum aperture.
The sharpest aperture for your lens will probably be somewhere in the middle of the aperture range. I can’t tell you what it is as I don’t know what lens you have!
Depth of field
Depth of field, or depth of sharpness, as I call it. I covered this in the last episode, Photography Explained Podcast Episode 162 – My Guide To Understanding Depth Of Field In Photography.
Depth of field is the amount of a photo from front to back that is sharp. Depth of field is determined by the aperture, focal length and where you and the subject are.
The depth of field depends on the subject matter. Landscape photographers will often get lots of depth of field in an image as they want all of a scene to be sharp. But they can also use a small aperture to isolate a detail within a scene. It just depends.
Shutter speed
Every photo needs to be tack-sharp. And to do this, you need a fast shutter speed, well, a fast enough shutter speed.
There are two parts to this.
- The shutter speed needs to be fast enough to freeze something moving.
- The shutter speed also needs to be fast enough to avoid camera shake. Camera shake is where the camera moves when you take a photo, meaning that the photo is blurry, not sharp.
But fast-moving subjects need fast shutter speeds. Not a surprise.
And you can use a slow shutter speed to get, say, water blurry but the background sharp—a very powerful way to get striking images. Motion blur is a very cool and creative thing, but you can still keep bits that are not moving sharp.
As I said before, you can use a tripod and the self-timer on your camera to eliminate camera shake and get sharp photos with slow shutter speeds or in low light conditions.
How a tripod can help you take sharp photos
A tripod is a three-legged device that you attach a camera to. Once you have done this, you have a stable base that allows you to take photos with slower shutter speeds and still get sharp photos.
I use a tripod when I can. There are lots of different types and sizes of tripods. There are boring tripods; there are funky tripods; there are bright and boldly coloured tripods. But remember that a tripod has one purpose: to keep your camera rock steady while you take a photo.
And if you are taking photos with your camera on a tripod, use a remote release. If you press the shutter button, there is a chance of getting camera movement, which will adversely affect the sharpness of an image. And you may need to turn off image stabilization, by the way!
Or just use the self-timer built into your camera – that is what I do.
ISO
In very broad terms, the lower the ISO, the higher the image quality you get. If you need to use a high ISO value to give you a fast enough shutter speed to get a sharp photo, then do it.
With your camera on a tripod, though this is not a problem, you can use the lowest ISO, meaning the highest quality image capture.
The higher the ISO, the higher the chance of bad digital stuff. The lower the ISO, the less bad digital stuff you get.
Auto or manual focus?
Some recommend using manual focus to get the sharpest images that you can. I am not one of those people. Far from it.
I am trying to remember the time that I last used manual focus. Why would I? My Canon 6D has autofocus. So why would I want to do this myself? There is tech in digital cameras which helps us, and for me, autofocus is very much that.
Where you focus
Where you focus will directly impact what is sharp and what is not sharp in a photo. As I have said, you usually focus on the subject or at a point to get what you want in a composition sharp.
RAW or JPEG?
RAW and JPEG are different file formats. You tell the camera which file format you want the camera to record the images in.
RAW files are unprocessed, apart from converting the light into a photo. JPEG photos have an amount of processing done when you take a photo.
This is an episode all of its own, which I covered in episode 91 – Photography Explained Podcast Episode 91 – RAW And JPEG – What Do They Mean? Which Is Better?
I will return to this in a future episode; that one was a couple of years ago and less than 9 minutes long, so yes, it is well worth redoing.
Great, two new episodes have arisen out of this one!
But, in very general terms, you get more data with a RAW image capture that you can work with, meaning that, in theory, you can get sharper photos with RAW files than you can with JPEG files.
In practice, I don’t think the difference is that much, and probably getting less and less as tech advances. In sharpness terms, that is.
Gear
The gear that you use will influence sharpness. If it didn’t, there wouldn’t be all that expensive stuff out there, would there?
Lens quality
Not surprisingly, lens quality determines how sharp a photo is. The higher the quality of the lens, the sharper the photos you get, not forgetting the sweet spot.
You would expect higher-quality, sharper photos with a top-of-the-range lens than a kit lens, right?
You can get a sharper image with a prime lens than you can with a zoom lens. Well, that is the theory anyway. But good quality zoom lenses these days are pretty good, so if you only use zoom lenses, you should be fine – just be aware of the limitations.
Focal length
I nearly forgot this. The focal length will influence the sharpness of photos. How? Simple. Taking photos using telephoto lenses gets you close to the subject, meaning that sharpness is more apparent. Take a photo with a wide-angle lens, and things are much further away. The focal length does not change the sharpness, but it does influence the depth of field and the perception of sharpness.
Camera resolution
Now, we are onto the camera itself. The resolution is measured in megapixels. The higher the megapixel number, the more detail that the camera captures. And more detail means the chance of more sharpness.
But – if you have the most expensive, fancy camera but your image capture is rubbish, you will not get sharp photos.
Sensor size
A larger sensor captures more data, so with more data, you have the opportunity to get sharper photos. With the ongoing development of tech in cameras, and, of course image processing, the gap is closing, but you will still get more detail and sharpness with a larger sensor.
Compare a medium format camera with a cropped sensor camera; yes, of course there is a difference.
Processing.
How you process images affects sharpness. In Lightroom, there is a panel called the detail panel, where you find “Sharpening”. This is a visual slider where the sharpness increases as you slide to the right. The beauty of this is that you can see when you have gone too far and dial it back a bit. It is a simple and very effective way to get the sharpness right when processing our photos. Other software is, of course, available; this is what I use.
And there is also Noise Reduction. Please be careful with noise reduction; this can remove some detail and can affect sharpness.
Other stuff
Acutance?
I have heard of acutance, but I am not afraid to admit that I didn’t really know what it was. So here it is.
“the sharpness of a photographic or printed image”.
It is about where you get hard edges between bits of a photo, I don’t know, like a black car against a light sky. Harder edges make things look sharper. A sharp edge makes a photo look sharper. Fuzzier edges make things less sharp, softer, even blurry. And this opens up a whole other world of complicated stuff I used to dabble in that I don’t want to return to.
I am happy that there is a slider in Lightroom where I can see the sharpness, change it, and see what is happening. I’m sorry, but I like to keep things simple where I can.
Tack sharp
Tack sharp is a term that is used in photography. But what does it mean? There are many definitions of what tack sharp means, and I mean many, and some surprisingly complicated ones.
But this is my take on what tack sharp means.
It means the sharpest photo that you can physically create. That is all. A photo that is as sharp as it can be.
A tack is a small, very sharp nail.
Okay, that is that sorted!
Here is the talky bit
Why am I talking about sharpness? The last episode was depth of field, or depth of sharpness, as I like to call it. So, covering sharpness in this episode makes sense.
As photographers, our aim has to be to get the sharpest photo that we can every time. Well, the subject matter sharp, that is. A lack of sharpness in a photo is a technical failing. As photographers, we need to be able to produce better images than others, using all the things that I have talked about here.
The sharpness of your photos, and mine is one of the ways that we can elevate ourselves, stand out, and be better than average.
Having a tack-sharp subject and a blurry background can give a photo impact and, of course, emphasise the subject. And make your photos stand out. Not everyone is doing this stuff. And standing out from the crowd is essential.
If you take a photo in low light handheld, you can increase the ISO to give you a faster shutter speed. But, if your choices are these
- Sharp photo with noise
- Blurry photo, no noise
Go with the sharp photo with noise every time. A blurry photo is of no use to anyone ever.
And I want to come back to another point. You can have the most expensive, megapixel-rich, fancy camera with the best lens on the planet. But you will only get sharp photos if your image capture technique is good.
I would rather you got the absolute best out of your gear with the best image capture techniques than spend a small fortune on gear.
This is all elements of image capture: the composition, the settings you use, how you take the photo, and how you process the photo. These all contribute individually to getting the best photos that we can.
And these things all apply whether you use a mirrorless camera, dlsr camera or micro four thirds camera.
Right – talky bit over. That was a nice short one.
What if I use a phone and not a camera?
There are so many variables, with so much done using the clever tech stuff built in. And the resolutions are going up; the new iPhone 14 pro has a 48 megapixel sensor. My Canon 6D has a 20 megapixel sensor.
Yes, really.
But will I get sharper photos with my phone? Possibly. But the phone is fighting the physical size constraints of being a phone with a small camera lens and a small sensor. dslr cameras and mirrorless cameras have much larger sensors, which allow the capture of more data, but the tech is closing the gap every year.
Phones are producing higher quality, sharper images than ever before. That is all I have to say about this.
What if I use a film camera?
The principles apply. In particular, ISO. With film photography, you have to choose an ISO; once you start, you are stuck with it. Of course, with digital photography, you can change the ISO from shot to shot; not the same with film, though, unless you have an unlimited budget or more than one camera!
When I did film photography, I used ISO 100 film most of the time, with ISO400 film for cloudy conditions or when photographing fast-moving things or for low light, and I used ISO 64 slide film when I wanted the highest quality.
And the same applies today. And you don’t get to choose a different ISO unless you change the film.
All the image capture techniques and gear stuff apply equally.
What do I do?
I take every photo that I can with my camera on a tripod. I use the lowest ISO I can, focus carefully, making sure I have what I want sharp, and then take every photo using the self-timer built into my full-frame Canon 6D.
I use f/8 for most of the photos that I take. This is the sweet spot on my go-to Canon 17-40mm lens. I use f/16 if I need more depth of field and sharpness from front to back. And I only use zoom lenses. I don’t have any fixed-focal-length lenses. Not anymore.
I manually select one of the 11 focus points on my Canon 6D to ensure that the main part of a photo is as sharp as it can be and whatever else I want sharp or not.
Yes, I manually select a single focus point.
And for handheld shooting? I take the reciprocal rule and then go one stop faster if I can. So if I shoot at 100mm, I will go with not 1/125th second; no, I go to 1/250th second, faster if I can. It depends on the light levels and the subject matter.
But in every photo, I aim to get what I want to be as sharp as possible. Image sharpness is critical to me. Image quality is essential to me.
And I have told you how I sort sharpness when processing my images in Lightroom.
This is what I do.
Some thoughts from the last episode
Photography Explained Podcast Episode 162 – My Guide To Understanding Depth Of Field In Photography
There is one thing that I want to say again. Getting the depth of field in a photo starts with you as the photographer. You need to decide how much depth of field you want for every photo you take. The camera will do what it can based on how it has been programmed, but your camera does not know what you are photographing and what you want out of a photo.
No, as clever as cameras are, you must know what you want and then tell the camera how to take the photo. So, no matter how clever your camera is, it all starts with you, dear listener.
Next episode
Understanding Histograms In Photography. They got bumped by sharpness, but now that I have done that, I will tell you about Histograms and how they can help you.
Ask me a question.
If you have a question you would like me to answer, head over to the podcast website – photographyexplainedpodcast.com/start where you can find out what to do. Or say hi. It would be lovely to hear from you.
And it would save me from having to come up with a question!
You don’t have to ask me a question for a podcast episode; you can ask me a question, and I will get back to you, and it might get made into a new episode. But I will give you a shout-out anyway.
That’s all
This episode was brought to you by, erm, a cheese and pickle sandwich and bag of salt and vinegar crisps, washed down with an ice-cold Diet Pepsi before I settled down in my homemade, acoustically cushioned recording emporium. Today’s acoustic treatment is my new blackout blind and two pillows. That is the final solution. There is no need for any more.
I’ve been Rick McEvoy; thanks again very much for listening to my small but perfectly formed podcast (it says here) and for giving me 27 ish minutes of your valuable time. This episode will be about 30 minutes long after I have edited out the mistakes and other bad stuff.
Take care, stay safe.
Cheers from me, Rick
OK – that was the podcast episode.
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Head over to the Start page on the Photography Explained Podcast website to find out more.
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And finally a little bit about me
Finally, yes this paragraph is all about me – check out my Rick McEvoy Photography website to find out more about me and my architectural, construction, real estate and travel photography work. I also write about general photography stuff, all in plain English without the irrelevant detail.
Thank you
Thanks for listening to my podcast (if you did) and reading this blog post (which I assume you have done as you are reading this).
Cheers from me Rick
