What makes a photo soft ?

Hi !

I've been publishing on ap since more than one year and sometimes the screeners have to reject my photos because they're soft according to them.

But what does "soft" mean ? What makes a photo softer than another one ? Is it because of my cheap bad quality lens (tamron 18-200) ? How can I process the photos to avoid this ?

Here's one of the soft one

http://www.airplane-pictures.net/images/rejected-images/2015-4/542415.jpg

Thank you

Hi Cedric.

Well it could be the lens. Using it at 200mm, this lens will be sharpest at F11. F6.3 will be sharper in the center.

Read this;

http://slrgear.com/reviews/showproduct.php/product/170

regards

Bjarne

Thanks a lot !

It's usually more than just the lens. Camera settings and technique will also play critical roles. Please send me a raw file example to sanordheim@gmail.com along with a quick description of your camera equipment, editing software and a step by step list of your editing workflow.

1.Vibration of your hands.

2.The shutter speed is not fast enough to catch the moving object.

3.Need more sharpening when post processing.

I think sharpness (or softness) is something personal for you or/and a screener .. I've uploaded many pics wich were sharp for me on my monitor,but got rejected for beeing soft. Everybody sees this different i think, and that's what it makes editing difficult imho..

Once got a picture got rejected for soft,edited with just one pass of USM with settings 200. 0,2 0(wich is not so much) and got it rejected by another screener for oversharpened.

This post has been edited by Marc Van Loo on 23rd April 2015 - 20:07

I too seem to be getting plenty of "Main object not sharp" rejections lately.

I have about 40 photos in the database so far mainly due to to time constraints (and rejections) and Ive tried hard to work around this.

Im using good gear (Canon 7D and Canon 100-400L lens) Im editing in photoshop CS6.

In the last week or so Ive submitted 20 photos and only 5 accepted. A good few of the rejections have been main object not sharp. One in particular was very frustrating because the first rejection didn't mention sharpness,it said image was slightly dark.

The second screener replied with "Borderline". So I rasied the exposure a touch and then got a rejection for too light and now not sharp.

Im sort of at a point where I don't really know what else to do to avoid this rejection for unsharp. My gear is good enough,Im very careful in editing to get it as sharp as possible.

One interesting point is this,,,,last year I made a point of shooting in Manual and keeping the aperture at 7.1 as I told this was the sweet spot for my lens. Since then Ive had more rejections than when I was shooting in the P mode. Having checked my accepted photos many are at apertures different to 7.1. Like F9,F11,F14. So I may go back to P mode to see what happens. Im reluctant though. Im very happy shooting fully manual and have a good awareness for making changes as the conditions fluctuate.

To Andre,would you mind if I sent you some of mine to see if I can get past this issue?

Ive included a photo of the rejection which was too dark,then too light and not sharp.

Garfield

Attached photos:

This is the original rejection,too dark. The previous photo is the second rejection,too light.

It`s also been suggested that I post images at 1200 instead of 1500 as I normally do.

Attached photos:

Right,made a mistake here.....

First one is the dark rejection,second one is the amended rejection which was too light and not sharp. Apologies for the confusion....Got there in the end!

Ive reprocessed this and the final attempt is here,submitted moments ago.

It`s at 1200 and has had slight changes made to the exposure and sharpening. If this is rejected Im truly lost for answers! Help!

Attached photos:

Are you using "Single point" focus mode? I had issues with my 7D not being able to lock the focus on a moving subject when not using single point. It looked sharp and focused on the camera screen but wasn't when it came to editing the images, just a suggestion! Hope it gets accepted, it's a nice picture!