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Blur by Manual Focus Error
Visual acuity of the eye coupled with the precision of the mechanical aspects of the camera give rise to a fairly large margin of error in terms of repeatably accurate manual focus.
No one can focus exactly the same each time, even with perfect 20/20 vision.
The focusing screen and blur characteristics of the lens can also exert a strong influence. For example the stock focusing screen on the Nikon D3x or D3s along with the Zeiss 100mm f/2 Makro-Planar just do not play well together— for me, and for a number of other readers. Yet the exact same lens on a Canon 1-series body focuses very easily and accurately every time. The focusing screen is likely to blame, but it could also be Nikon’s viewfinder alignment (it is my experience that Canon does a better job there).
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Diglloyd Making Sharp Images articulates years of best practices and how-to, painstakingly learned over a decade of camera and lens evaluation.
Save yourself those years of trial and error by jump-starting your photographic technical execution when making the image. The best lens or camera is handicapped if the photographer fails to master perfect shot discipline. High-resolution digital cameras are unforgiving of errors, at least if one wants the best possible results.
- Eases into photographic challenges with an introductory section.
- Covers aspects of digital sensor technology that relate to getting the best image quality.
- Technique section discusses every aspect of making a sharp image handheld or on a tripod.
- Depth of field and how to bypass depth of field limitations via focus stacking.
- Optical aberrations: what they are, what they look like, and what to do about them.
- MTF, field curvature, focus shift: insight into the limitations of lab tests and why imaging performance is far more complex than it appears.
- Optical aberrations: what they are, what they look like, and what to do about them.
- How to test a lens for a “bad sample”.
Intrigued? See Focusing Zeiss DSLR Lenses For Peak Performance, PART ONE: The Challenges, or (one topic of many) field curvature.
Bottom image was obtained using Live View
Nikon D3 + Zeiss 100mm f/2 Makro-Planar