Somebody please help me with my crappy pics

[Anonymous]

I have a Coolpix 950 that I used to take decent pictures with on my 65 a couple of years ago.

Now whenever I try it on the 120 the best I can get is stuff like this:

the focus looks soft no matter what. There is bad aliasing everywhere- I think I used the finest quality settings for the jpg compression- I usually use medium resolution since its just for the web. I try all kinds of exposure speeds, even putting it on a tripod.

Any suggestions?

 

[Anonymous]

What i find odd is that no part of the pic is in focus. Is the water in the tank clear? Something is keeping the camera from focusing. Can you take clear pictures of things outside of the tank? (gee, who takes pictures of things outside their tanks, right ? :roll: )

There may be a problem with your camera. You might have to send it back to Nikon.

Louey

 

[Len]

Ok, shoot me for suggesting the obvious, but clean your lens with a lint-free fabric (like those provided for eyewear). Ive found this fixes most of my focusing problems.

It may also have to do with the additional thickness of the glass, unfortunately, but hopefully it's just a dirty lens. Also, most cameras have a tough time auto-focusing more then a foot into the water. The sharpest shots will nearly always be ones up close to the front glass. Needless to say, make sure the glass is as spotless as possible

Last suggestion is to shoot with the lens directly parellel to the glass instead of at angles. Thick glass bends light in funny ways, and the images usually comes out blurry if you shoot off-angle. The only sharp shots I can get from my camera system is when I shoot dead ahead.

 

[Anonymous]

Also try switching into manual focus (if your camera does that). I can rarely get decent autofocus shots (especially macro) in or out of water on autofocus. Could also try stepping up the aperture to increase the DOF.

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks guys, excellent suggestions! I'll give them a try.

 

[Anonymous]

Here they are with most of this stuff in mind:

Here's a picture of the wall in my office, auto everything:

It still looks soft....

Look at the vivarium pictures I took last winter:
http://www.danielconnor.com/vivarium.html
They look sharp, don't they? Could it be the camera?

 

[Anonymous]

here's a pic I took this morning at breakfast- I guess its reasonably sharp.
I will work more with manual focus, I guess. Kinda miss my old Canon AE1.

 

[gregr]

hi-
i agree that the pictures do look soft. has the camera been dropped maybe?
for a test try putting the camera on a tripod, enable the self timer and shoot that piece of paper again- but make sure the paper is parallel to the film plane. taping the paper to the wall will help. if the resulting photo is anything but tack sharp i'd say there is a lens element out of whack.
greg