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Sharpness with Mirror Lockup, Exposure Delay, VR
The Shutter Speed test proves that shutter speed is a strong influence on image sharpness for long telephotos, even on a sturdy tripod.
To investigate how different camera shooting modes affect image sharpness, the following techniques were evaluated. All frames used the MC-20 remote release to avoid introducing hand-motion as a variable:
- mirror lockup (MLU) — the reference image, maximum possible quality
- normal — no mirror lockup, no mirror delay, no Vibration Reduction
- mirror delay — fixed 0.4 second delay after mirror up, as per D2X setting
- Vibration Reduction*** on
- Vibration Reduction*** on, mirror delay on
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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.