why are my pictures not clear enough?

[efang622]

I am new here and I hope to get some helps. I made some pictures and I feel that they are not clear enough. ( you can look at the person’s face) The camera is Nikon coopix 5000, I think it is a 5M digital camera, I am not familiar with this machine because I borrowed it from my sister .I have another 5M camera but not on my hand now, so I can’t compare with it.
I hope someone can point me in right direction and tell me what wrong with these pictures, if a 5M camera just can make picture like this or I can make picture more exactly by it .

Thanks!
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[Frog]

I'm not completely sure what you mean by 'not clear' but if your are not happy with the exposure on the person's face, its because your camera was metered for the bright sky and backgrounds.

[mn shutterbug]

I'm not familiar with this camera, but if your main intention is for the person to be sharp, set the camera for spot meter and meter off her face. As Frog said, the same goes for exposure.

[Medley]

Do you have any kind of post-processing software? There are ways to make the image seem more clear. To create the illusion of sharpness, if you will.

It would also help to know the size print you made.

- Joe U.

[Canuck935]

It seems the camera is focusing on the contrasty background instead of the person.

[another view]

Clear = Sharp? I think it has something to do with the way the images were resized. Looking around your two shots, some of the straight lines don't look quite right and they're usually the easiest places to see this. If you or your sister has another way of resizing the images, give that a shot.

Small P&S cameras like this have tons of depth of field (which means that a lot of your shot will be in focus) so I dont think that if the camera was focusing on the background that it would be too bad. The Coolpix 5000 can be set up a lot of different ways, but the "default" setting probably did focus on the background. Best results would have been by focusing on the person, and the manual will show all of the different setup options. I use mine with the five focus areas showing on the LCD screen.

[livin4lax09]

even with the amount of DOF p&s's have, this is still a problem. I have seen many photos that are backfocused on the background leaving the subjects out of focus.

but your problem looks like what canuck said, your focus is just off. you just have to make sure you have the focus on the subject, and that can be achieved by playing around with the focus points.

[drg]

The main problem I see is there is a shadow across the face. Shooting outside on a sunny day you can have sun squints or this or half shadowed face in open sunlight.

One solution is to turn the flash on and 'fill' in the shadow on the face.

Another solution when shooting outside with the sun behind the subject is to put a big shiny or light colored building behind you, the photographer, as a natural reflector to fill in the shadows.

The exposure looks pretty good on both of them. Some post processing with a fill flash tool or selective brightness adjustment or curves enhancement might do what you want??

Watch the image quality selection in the camera (shoot the highest quality you can). One never know when you might want to make an enlargement or crop down the image. I wonder if that is causing more of the undesirable effect rather than focus/depth of Field issues. Did you resize these before posting, and if you did was there any sharpening done after the resize?

Finally, in future photographs of this type try putting the person slightly to one side or another in the photo. It has more 'effect'. There's all kinds of guidelines and formulas, the simplest is don't bullseye the people in the middle of the photo.

Good luck and we will look forward to more photographs!

[efang622]

I am sorry because I mean " not clear enough" is " not sharp enough". now I am feeling it is better after I used "sharpening".

Thanks!