Olympus Photo Safari Group

Selamat Pagi Sharil,

Actually softness on all my cameras is something that I have to deal with often. Because I have a very relaxed workflow. Some members have a comprehensive workflow, methodology. Several ideas.

BTW, you don't need RAW unless you want it. Olympus style of JPEG is very good.

Get the photo sharp.

1. One way is to ensure that the lighting is such that it reveals texture in the subjects. If your lighting is not strongly directional, no strong shadows, no strong highlights, the photo itself has not much texture. This can appear to be soft.

2. Second thing and it is second, not first, is to increase the sharpness in the camera. On my DSLRs, I move the slider for the profile to a sharper position. If you don't like to do that, then a more effective way is to post process - which means you have at least to spend some minutes on the computer. your choice.

4. Ensure that you don't have any motion blur. IS will help you with handshake blur but motion blur is not under the control of IS. So, there are people walking. Depending on whether they are walking towards you, across you, you need to eliminate that blur if you want sharp. With the PEN EP-1 like all cameras that you shoot using LCD, you think you got a good shot but actually, your hand move a bit more than you expect.. Increase the shutter speed which depends on the focal length you have used and the speed of motion. For people walking like this, agak, agak, you want at least 1/200th and better, 1/500th. Of course once you know this is not the cause you can relax a bit.

5. Ensure the AF is working ok, pointing at the right thing. I would not expect much AF problem with 14mm but at 42mm esp at wide open aperture, the AF can point to something but it is not the thing you want sharp. The other leg of the triangle you hit is f/no. If the f/no is full wide open, e.g. f/4, the DOF is shallow but not shallow enough. Meaning if the lens can go f/2.8 or f/2, you can clearly see which part is sharp and which part is blur. If the f/no goes to f/8, then senang, the lens is sharp there and the DOF is pretty deep there so everything easily sharp. But if you use f/4, then is half here, half there - everything can look soft.

Finally, when you upload the picture to website, you either have to resize the picture and/or the webhost (flickr, picasa) will resize the picture. All these resizing causes the softness. You can purposely resize, re-sharpen, save. There is a free program called Faststone Resizer that can do a batch of photos if you don't want to work too hard.

Selamat jalan
Ananda