Why does my jewelry close-up look blurry at 100%, and how can I make it sharper?
Asked 5/11/2013
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I photographed a piece of jewelry with a Canon EOS 550D on a tripod under artificial light. When I view the image at 100%, only a small area looks sharp and the rest appears blurred. There was no digital zoom. Why does this happen in close-up product photography, and what can I do to get a sharper result? Also, how can I judge the real sharpness limits of my camera and setup?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
13y ago
2 Answers
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Welcome to the wonderful world of macro product photography.
First, you need to understand that when you photograph things at high magnification, you won't get a whole lot of depth of field. In this instance, very little is in focus. Look at the leftmost two pendant rings at the bottom of the earring on the right: just that little bit is sharp, and most of the rest of the image is out-of-focus to one degree or another. You would need to use a smaller aperture (bigger f-number) to get more in focus, and take several images focused at different distances and merge them using a technique called focus stacking to get all of it in focus. There's no way around the physics; you won't be able to get everything in focus at the same time unless you reduce the magnification at the sensor by using something like a compact camera with a much smaller sensor.
There is another problem here as well, and that's that the earrings are very much overexposed. You are going to get blown-out highlights unless you let everything but the sparkles (specular highlights) get very, very dark. Again, that's unavoidable in a single image. But when overexposure gets to this level, it causes problems both within the lens (flare and purple fringing) and at the sensor (because colour information for each pixel depends on neighbouring pixels, and badly overexposed pixels carry no useful colour information). To get both sharp earrings and a readable background with the light you're using now, you will probably need to take at least two images and merge them to an HDR image. Or you could use broader, flatter light to illuminate the background objects (primarily, it will also fill shadows on the earrings and provide some highlights), which will also have the effect of reducing the relative intensity of the light that's providing the sparkle. (You can get the fill light from your main light simply by using cardboard or tin foil reflectors if you don't have separate lighting available.) Don't be afraid to spend some time taking pictures and playing with the light. There are shortcuts (like "light tents"), but they almost always result in uninteresting pictures.
Originally by user2719. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user2719
13y ago
0
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This is mainly a depth-of-field issue, not digital zoom or necessarily a camera fault. In close-up/macro-style product photography, depth of field becomes extremely shallow, so only a thin slice of the subject is truly in focus. In your image, a small part of the jewelry is sharp while areas nearer and farther away fall out of focus.
To improve sharpness:
- Use a smaller aperture (higher f-number) to increase depth of field.
- Keep the camera on a tripod and use stable lighting.
- If you need the whole item sharp, take multiple shots focused at different distances and combine them with focus stacking.
- Alternatively, reduce magnification / shoot from farther away if possible, which increases apparent depth of field.
There’s no way to make a highly magnified 3D object all sharp in one shot without tradeoffs—the limitation is mostly physics. To benchmark your setup, photograph a flat subject parallel to the sensor plane under controlled conditions. If that flat target is sharp, your camera/lens are likely performing normally, and the blur in jewelry shots is due to shallow depth of field rather than lack of camera capability.
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