Urgent help with image quality

[Pabloohana]

Hi everyone,

 

I'm at a conference this weekend and I'm struggling with the quality of my images. They're either too dark, too bright, blurry or fuzzy. I can't seem to control them very well at all despite the subject being well lit and me being able to get close to them. I can't seem to work out for the life of me what I'm doing wrong.

 

Here's a link to a couple as an example: https://tinyurl.com/yd2ugntu

 

Thanks!

 

[vpics]

You didn't mention the equipment and settings you use. 

I'd probably shoot at a high ISO speed (above 1600) and a fast shutter speed. 

[Johnnie5]

Your shutter speed is on the low side, a faster lens would help a lot.  A 50mm 1.8 would work well on that camera.  Try ISO 6400 and bump your shutter speed up to 1/100 of a second.  If you are shooting in RAW and have lightroom to deal with the noise you should be able to get OK results.  If you have the 50mm you can shoot at a lower ISO and you will be able to crop if you don't have enough reach.

[hdh]

its a combination of ISO, exposure and aperture you are using.
Also you have motion blur - I saw one shot taken at 1/25th f.6.3 and 3200 ISO @ 125mm.

With a moving subject a shot like this is difficult to come out sharp - specially if camera is hand held. 

 

I believe in the environment you are in and the equipment you use, I would go with the aperture fixed to as wide open as possible. 

fix aperture to f3.5 on the wide open setting of your 18-135 Nikkor. 

Try to get to an exposure of around 1/100, selecting the appropriate ISO speed for that setting and the light available.

 

Or, use a flash - preferably an external one as the small one in camera may not provide the reach you may need.   

[fotoDogue]

On 9/16/2017 at 10:22, Pabloohana said:

Hi everyone,

 

I'm at a conference this weekend and I'm struggling with the quality of my images. They're either too dark, too bright, blurry or fuzzy. I can't seem to control them very well at all despite the subject being well lit and me being able to get close to them. I can't seem to work out for the life of me what I'm doing wrong.

 

Here's a link to a couple as an example: https://tinyurl.com/yd2ugntu

 

Thanks!

 

 

It seems like you might benefit from a basic photography course that explains the relationship between aperture and shutter speed.

[MariaJ]

In agreement with the others, shutter speed is too slow to capture the movement of the speaker.  There appears to be camera movement as well, because some of the stationary background objects are blurred.    Matrix metering probably isn't the best for this situation, I would probably do centre metering on the subject.   And a flash would be a good idea if possible.

 

Maria

[imageplotter]

I shoot a lot of corporate conferences and seminars for clients. Boring stuff, but in the end it pays ok (which, sadly, stock and news don't for me). I'd find a 50mm too limiting for general conference use unless you're fixed to one spot (probably are at a party conference, but for corporates, it's usually possible to move around once in a while), plus you'll have to do a lot of cropping afterwards, which costs time. The 24-70 f2.8 is a great friend in these situations, or a 70-200 f2.8 if further away, f2.8 is fine if just one speaker and usually lets you get away with ISO 1600-2500 at somewhere between 160-250sec (or faster for very agitated people   ) On Nikon, you can probably get away with higher ISOs, on a Canon 5 Mk 3 or 4 I can't really justify going higher than 3200 for stuff where faces matter, any work on reducing noise afterwards ruins the facial features. Just my opinion, everyone works differently.

 

Although if there are absolutely no other options then yes, I'd rather bump the ISO higher than shoot slower and risk a blurry shot, because in the end a corporate client is likely to want the images for web use rather than as a life sized billboard poster in the hallway, and they'll end up somewhere quite small in size so noise will show less than blur. Not sure if your images were for news use, but even then I'd rather see noise than blur.