Why are my sports team pictures fuzzy?

Question

UPDATE: I added the largest jpeg files I could with the original tone, unedited except for a cropping and the change from RAW to jpeg. Thanks for everyone's advice!! This forum is awesome!

I use a Nikon D90 and had a Sigma 18-200mm lens. The pictures were snapped at 1/200s f4.5 with ISO 1250 (read about poor gym lighting the ISO setting was the tip) and I had a shoe mounted flash as well as two florescent bulb light stands with white umbrellas. I shot in RAW.

I had it on manual focus because I had my tripod set up and tape on the floor and everyone standing in the same place and I didn't trust my auto focus...

I am due to print around 200 8x10's in two weeks and I am in way over my head and very upset. I have lots of experience in traditional darkroom photo but little in digital. I am using Lightroom, and eventually uploading to Zenfolio who use mPix to do my printing for me.

Please please help with any tips I can use for editing these in Lightroom, or if you think I should redo the shoot, or just give parents back their money and just give up.

Answer 1

I do not think your photos are fuzzy,I think they are noisy. You will get the best quality image by shooting as close to the 'native' ISO as possible. For most modern dSLRS that is typically ISO 100 or 200. By shooting at ISO 1250, you will naturally get noise. Reshooting is the only thing that will significantly reduce the noise.

With Lightroom, assuming you are shooting RAW (you are shooting RAW, right?), you can reduce the exposure to 0 to .25 or so, which will cut the noise as best you can. Adjust the white balance to set it such that the 'warning' or red indicator is not present in the photo, and adjust blacks such that there are no blue indicators. Then add noise reduction to what you feel is helpful, likely 25-40 or so. I would add lens corrections for your lens as well. Given these settings, it will likely be about the best you can do with the ISO you shot.

Next time, try a better lens, perhaps even an inexpensive 50mm, adjust zoom with your feet, shoot at f/8 and have the flashes adjust to compensate for ISO 200 if you can.

Answer 2

Hopefully, you shot RAW! But even if you didn't, you can still try to fix some of these things in Lightroom.

To my subjective eye (and subjective monitor...), the white jerseys are slightly over exposed, so it draws the eye away from the person's face. Also the first player's face seems slightly over exposed. To me it gives a sense of fuzziness.

Another poster also pointed out your ISO noise. If you adjust ISO noise, you'll probably also want to sharpen.

In Lightroom I would:

• Adjust the highlights/whites down just a tad
• Turn up Luminance Noise Reduction and see if that helps.
• You then might want to sharpen the image slightly. I usually just adjust the Mask and Amount to get results I want.

From what I've read much ISO noise can be taken out by adjusting the luminance (brightness) of the noise -- rather than the color noise. For sharpening, I like to use the mask to restrict the sharpening to edges I care about.

When making adjustments, always slide the adjuster to the extreme value to get an idea of what is changing, then back it off and pick what looks good to your artistic vision.

In the future, if you're using flash and light stands, couldn't you shoot at a lower ISO?

Update:

Elizabeth provided me with a few NEF's and I adjusted them according to my eye:

• "Noise Reduction/Luminence" up to 20 and it definitely improves the skin texture. 40 might be ok, depending on artistic vision/
• "Sharpening/Amount" mask, I upped the mask to 70. If you hold down ALT (or the Mac equivalent) while moving this, you'll see the mask apply (it will turn b&w) -- basically I'm setting it high enough so that it shows me the outlines I want sharpened.
• Sharpening/Amount" to 60. Slide it to the extreme and note how it can negatively affect the picture -- it can sharpen textures instead of borders, which you don't want.
• Your white balance looks ok.
• In the tone section I dropped "Blacks" down to -7 and "Whites" to +21 just to fill up/stretch the tonal range in the histogram.
• "Contrast" -- I tried +20.
• A touch of "Presence/Clarity", +5 to give a little bit more definition/contrast.
• I took the adjustment brush and added +23 sharpness to the eyes.

..They might not be significantly better than Elizabeth's own edits.

Update:

Also, you have shown a crop -- the actual picture is pretty wide:

...so some of your quality issue is with cropping the image .. essentially digitally zooming it. I think if you did a test print of the full photo at 8x10 you'd find it's not so bad.

---

Answer 3

Couple questions that might help narrowing it down:

1. Can you rule out the lens (mounted on this camera) as a source of the problem? Do you have any good pictures shot with it at the same aperture and focal length?
2. What was your setting in LR for noise reduction? Isn't the NR overdone?
3. What is the LR settings for sharpening? Can you crank up the sharpening a bit more?
4. Did you shoot it as raw?

I tried to load the image to ACR and it looks like the sharpening tool combined with noise reduction can make it look ok, I think reasonably good for 8x10. I had to do it on the jpeg, but if you have raw, the chances are that the result will be better than what I can accomplish here.

Answer 4

Due to the excessive amount of noise, I think you have two options.

1) Try using a denoise tool (such as Topaz DeNoise, there are others as well). This may give you acceptable results, if not...

2) Reshoot with better lighting. (BTW - you don't need to shoot at 1/200s for a portrait, there is very little motion, so slow down your shutter and lower your ISO)

Answer 5

I don't think these are salvageable in post to be honest. At least not at a level I'd be comfortable charging a decent enough price to make it worth the timeSeveral folks have talked about the main issue these show... the noise. I have a couple other ideas that I don't think are helping any at all. Consider them more food for thought for next time.

First off the lens. That's a pretty huge range of zoom, any lens with that much zoom is going to have more elements than a simple prime, and more elements means more chances for things to get micro misaligned, which means no where on it will be as sharp as the corresponding prime. With a tripod and a marked spot on the floor, there's no reason to use a zoom, let alone a zoom with that much range. You can rent a 50mm prime Nikon lens for $15 for a 4 day rental. You're charging parents greater than cost of goods for these pictures? That $15 is cost of doing business. Amortized across an entire team and you're talking a couple coins per athlete....

Second item, I could be mis-interpreting what you said in the question, but it feels like you locked in a focal length before hand and didn't re-focus from player to player. If that's not what you did, then a lot of what I'm about to write isn't relevant.

Just from these two images you can see a difference in where they were standing, one has the balls of her feet on the line, the other almost the heels are on the line. And how were they standing? leaning in? leaning back? that could easily account for almost a foot of difference between the two extremes. You were shooting at f4.5... but at what distance? and what focal length? Did you do the depth of field calculations to see how much wiggle room you had?

I haven't shot with a D90, so I'm not sure if you have the ability to do a rear screen live preview with a digital zoom, but if you do, in this scenario, it's worth it to use that to do fine tuning on each person you're shooting. OR, do the math and figure out a way to get foot or so of DOF either with a longer lens and more floor, or a tighter aperture.

Related to that... it's not going to directly alter the sharpness of the subject, but it will alter the perception of it if you can get the background far enough away to have it go out of focus. Again some time with a tape measure and DoF calculator will help get that figured out ahead of time. But the backside practically on the wall like these shots have is never going to get there without also risking having enough DoF to cover various depths needed for various people.

Answer 6

In my opinion, the lens is good enough. The fuzzynes is the smallest problem.

1) The noise. If you are using the built in flash, you really do not need to push the iso to 1250. 200-400 is ok.

2) The built in flash. I supose you want the prints because you want the photos to last, and be apreciated... That lighting is the worst light you can get. Sure, you have the photo taken but it is not flattering.

3) The background. A flat wall... just makes the photo... flat. You are on a gym! Take a look at a google search: https://www.google.com/search?q=gym+portrait No flat wall, no built in flash.

Yes this two points will have an impact on how you take the photos, you need to push the iso again, use a tripod, use the built in flash as a fill light (reduce its power to -1 or -2 ev).

4) Stand further away and use a longer focal length. You have space... you are on a Gym.

5) Please, change the resolution settings of the camera. You are taking Just a 6 Megapixel photo, instead of the 12 Mpx.

6) Fuzzyness? oh, true... reduce the noise with https://ni.neatvideo.com free in some cases. Read the licence agreement.

Sharpen a bit more.