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I recently shot some pictures for a graduation where the audience is seated like a hockey arena around 50m distance from the stage.

I used a Nikon D5200 with Tamron 90mm Macro lens f/2.8 VC and am disappointed on the focus of my shots.

Any suggestion on what to upgrade for this kind of situation? The only telescopic lens I have is the 55-200mm kit lens and I didn't use it.

Side question: I assume my SB-700 AF assist doesn't help at this kind of range?

Sample shots:

sample 1

sample 2

mattdm
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MDuh
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  • The question is about different specific camera gear but it is essentially the same question. The accepted answer is certainly applicable to your question as well. the best way to improve image sharpness on Canon 700D – Michael C Jul 04 '18 at 03:47
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    Possible duplicate of How do I diagnose the source of focus problem in a camera? – Michael C Jul 04 '18 at 03:57
  • I just read the thing that you linked and what I get to honestly is my camera body sucks for low light and I should get a better telescopic lens than my kit lens.

    The only thing that applies to me was the concert shot and @, 1/1600 ISO 3200, the noise on my D5200 will be waaay worse than that (assuming that shot wasn't post-processed yet).

    I've asked for a gear question because when I'm trying to focus using the tamron macro lens, I had to half-hold for more than a second to get the focus and most of the time it is focusing wrong on that distance

     – MDuh Jul 04 '18 at 04:10
  • Related: Why do my studio shoots usually end up fuzzy? and the best way to improve image sharpness on Canon 700D and Why are my photos not crisp? – Michael C Jul 04 '18 at 04:11
  • When you're shooting under such lighting as in your examples and in mine, shooting raw and postprocessing is all part of the process. Lots of noise in my hockey pictures. What am I doing wrong? But go ahead and buy an expensive lens, then you can compare notes with the user that asked Canon 7d & 24-70 ii - can't get a crisp or well exposed shot – Michael C Jul 04 '18 at 04:17
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    The D5200 is better at ISO 3200 than the 7D. The D5200 sensor pretty much outperforms the 7D sensor at every metric measured by DxO. It's not the gear... – Michael C Jul 04 '18 at 04:22
  • I kinda realized I might have asked the wrong question here. This was my first experience with low light shooting and I was hoping to get gear suggestion for this kind of environment especially getting a faster AF. Most of the photos I shoot are usually plants/flowers outdoors so I usually do manual focus and only use the AF on the tamron for portraits. When post processing in lightroom, I kinda don't like how much noise my D5200 produce even @ ISO 3000 (probably because with it's DX crop sensor) and get annoyed how much details disappear when I post process it. – MDuh Jul 04 '18 at 04:27
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    first time I heard that shooting full stop of ISOs is better than it's 1/3 stop behind though. Might do some testing on that – MDuh Jul 04 '18 at 04:35
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    The 1/3 stop ISO thing varies depending on the sensor design and the way the camera has been set up by the designers to handle different ISO settings. Almost all Canon DSLRs since about 2004 are set up that way. Nikon cameras can vary from one model to the next, with some of the Sony sensors having actual amplification for every 1/3 stop step, and other models doing it 'push/pull' from the "whole stops'. – Michael C Jul 04 '18 at 05:30
  • "Most of the photos I shoot are usually plants/flowers outdoors so I usually do manual focus and only use the AF on the tamron for portraits." It takes a lot of practice to master any camera's AF system, and they can be very different 'personalities' from one camera model to the next. You really do need to spend time studying it and then putting the knowledge gained to practice in 'non-critical' shooting situations first. Canon does seem to do a better job with educating their users about their AF systems. There's a 200+ page manual dedicated solely to the AF system of the 1D X Mark II! – Michael C Jul 04 '18 at 05:35
  • Read the manual? Who does that when they can just ask questions here? – xiota Jul 04 '18 at 05:39
  • There are several versions of the Tamron 90mm Macro. The older Tamron lenses from, say about 2008 and earlier can be very slow focusers. But some are better in that regard. My SP 17-50mm f/2.8 Di II is decently fast with AF, but the original SP 70-200mm f/2.8 Di 'Macro' (not really a macro) was notoriously slow. It may well be that your Tamron is a relatively slow focuser. But a graduation ceremony usually offers plenty of opportunity to "pre-focus" on the spot your subject is going to be. Depending on the subject's place in line, there might be a large number of others in the same spot. – Michael C Jul 04 '18 at 05:42
  • @xiota At least one of us who answers such questions here. It really does make a difference to understand your camera's AF system. Once you learn how to tell it what you want instead of only thinking you are telling it what you want when you are actually telling it something else, your keeper rate can improve significantly. – Michael C Jul 04 '18 at 05:43
  • As we seem to have generated a lot of chat on this one, let me add my own ¢2. I have similar though not identical equipment, with a Tamron 70-300 & Nikon 18-300. The Tamron is sharper, the Nikon is faster to focus, by a long way. In the studio where I control the lighting, I use the Tamron. Any time I'm not in charge of the lighting, I take the Nikon. Better 50 reasonably sharp shots than 1 good one & only 10 blurry ones, because the rest of the time the AF wasn't fast enough to even take the shot. The Nikon's stabilisation is leaps ahead too. – Tetsujin Jul 04 '18 at 09:53
  • Your third image has vanished from imgur. I've added the other two to Stack Exchange's contracted image hosting (using the upload feature) so that that doesn't happen to the other two – mattdm Jul 27 '18 at 08:39

2 Answers2

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In my opinion the images are in focus, but the noise is making the soft and appear out of focus.
Since you have not included any deatils in the photos it's hard to give suggestions.
But I assume you shot at 2.8 and I see in the comments you write 1/1600 ISO 3200

Did you really have 1/1600?
What did you expect was going to happen so fast that you need 1/1600 to capture it?
At 90 mm with crop sensor you have 135 mm full frame. That means 1/125 is the closest equivilent.
But I would probably go for 1/250 and add a little ISO.
1/250 would probably been fast enough to not get motion or shake blur and have less noise from the high ISO.

Andreas
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From what I can gather from your shots, I'm assuming that in order to attempt and thwart the low light situation, you opted for a larger aperture to allow more light in. Whilst this does work, it also comes with a shallower depth of field which is not what you're after here considering you have a larger subject.

In this case, you would need to use a smaller aperture to increase depth of field & get more of your shot in focus, increase the shutter speed and bump the ISO setting. Unfortunately, an APS-C sensor is not the best for low light situations.

What I personally would have done is that I would have moved in closer and used an external flash to illuminate the subject so you can freeze the subject better and reduce the need to increase the ISO as much as that will help cut down the noise in your image.

That said, you seem to be headed in the right direction but I would focus more of my attention on composition more than anything else at this stage.

Sean

Sean Spiteri
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