Whiskeyman
Senior Member
No worries, Jake. It's a great story and information wherever it's posted. Thank you for sharing.
Wayne
Nikon D500 lacks sharpness
- Thread starter JohnD500
- Start date
No worries, Jake. It's a great story and information wherever it's posted. Thank you for sharing.
Wayne
Whiskeyman
Senior Member
I may have to try Heaven's Door if I can find a bottle of it. The Double Barrel offering intrigues me. The brand locator says it's available at several places near me, so I should be able to find it.
Thanks for the craniums up on this one, Jake.
Wayne
BackdoorArts
Senior Member
It's always a CAO Brazilia Amazon. I'll tell you this, Swallowtail butterflies are attracted to it. Light one up and they show up and fly around me.
If you are using AF-C, are you in the d153 mode? Using all 153 AF points? You're using a D lens, that will be slower in autofocussing to being with. It seems like your photos are either back or forward focused. When you are using AF-C with d153, you should see the 153 points in your viewfinder in grey, with the points that are locking onto subjects in red, usually jumping around as the AF system is hunting for a subject. You depress the shutter release gently to get that AF process hunting around for the subject, and then you wait until it finds the subject you want in the photo (ie: the bird's eyes or face) and only then do you depress the shutter release button further to capture the image at that particular focus point. With a lower contrast, smaller aperture zoom lens, the camera might have to also hunt around a bit more and at 400mm for example, depth of field will still be quite narrow so waiting for the AF system to catch up will be even more important. I would simply make sure to watch and wait for the AF points (red squares) to find their mark. If you release too soon, you will get photos like that. In this case you are limited by the lens, not the camera. Also make sure that the viewfinder is adjusted for your eyes (dioptor adjustment) so what you see is at the same focus as your lens. Finally, if there is still a problem (ie: consistently the same back or forward focus), you might need to calibrate your lens to the camera (ie: set AF up to -20 or +20 to compensate for the back or forward focus). Also, as mentioned, the D zoom lens like that wouldn't be super sharp to begin with so even in focus you won't have the full potential of the sensor being seen.
Also there are many good tutorial videos on AF settings for the D500 on youtube, as it is hard to describe all the menu settings here.
Also there are many good tutorial videos on AF settings for the D500 on youtube, as it is hard to describe all the menu settings here.
I got a D500 over a year ago to replace the aging D300 I used for the crop factor and super telephoto lenses and have never had any issues with sharpness, though all of my lenses are manual focus AI/AIS so if the images are unsharp, it is all on me.
Have you gotten sharp images with those lenses on other bodies? Have you tried focusing manually instead of AF?
Have you gotten sharp images with those lenses on other bodies? Have you tried focusing manually instead of AF?
One thing to think about is if the cameras you are coming from, if you used jpeg (where sharpening is applied in camera) to RAW in the D500 (no edits in camera are made) That may be an issue. Raw images are usually a tad soft straight from camera and often require a touch of sharpening.