John H. wrote:
On Fri, 14 Dec 2007 21:46:42 GMT, Short Wave Sportfishing
wrote:

On Fri, 14 Dec 2007 09:01:48 -0500, John H.
wrote:

OK, I'll accept all the other faults, with the exception of the flash,
which was bounced off the ceiling.
Ok, then something else happened to soften up the image. Did you
check white balance, sharpening, saturation. contrast levels in the
camara? Did you shoot in RGB or Adobe color space?

Yes, as it stands the focus isn't too bad. However, if you crop the face
even more, the freckles, hairs, etc, become very blurred.
Read on dude...

Your comment about 'narrowing the auto focus' is interesting. I set the
camera for center spot focusing, as opposed to 'area' focusing. I'm
expecting to see the center of the picture, or whatever I focus on, in very
sharp detail.
Ok, I phrased that badly - what I meant to say was that your narrow
focus spot metering did you in on that image - sorry, I was really
(and still am) tired late yesterday.

Area spot imaging will give you a broader focusing area to work with
and as you were to the side of the subject with varying distances
involved, spotting the meter wouldn't necessarily work well.

With respect to detail on spot metering, the spot metering does more
than just focus the lens for you - it also reads light, adjusts the
image parameters and a ton of other things as part of it's algorithm.
That image is focused - it's all the other issues that caused the
percieved soft focus problem.

This picture was taken from about six feet away. In looking
at the EXIF data, I noticed that the 'sharpness' was set at 'soft'. I've
got to check into that. Maybe that's part of my problem.
Very definetly part of the probem, but not the whole problem.

The other issue that I forgot to ask is if you shot in .jpg, then
exported the image to a processor. Sometimes, not always mind you, if
you have the camera color space set differently than the processor
color space, the results can be iffy - changes in compression, etc.
You might have shot at a low compression scale also which might have
affected things.

Also, again not always, once you edit an image, if the processor isn't
get properly, the translation can give you some loss - in particular
if the image is set for print or web display.

Which is why I always shoot in Adobe space and in RAW format.

I appreciate your suggestions.

I shoot in what the D200 calls "jpg fine". Usually this hasn't been a
problem. I didn't do any processing, other than cropping the sides. Not
sure what you mean by 'color space'. I am going to change the sharpness
setting, if I can find it.

Again, your comments are welcome.

John it really is easy:

1. Hit menu
2.Go the little camera,(it will say "Shooting Menu" on the top of the
window. Move down till you see the "Color Space" if you normally don't
process in Adobe make sure it is on sRGB. If you do use Adobe to adjust
color, vibrance, etc, change it to AdobeRGB.
3. Now move the cursor down until you see "Optimize Image" Click on
that and you can change it to Normal, softer, vivid etc.

Now the camera computer will process the info using those settings and
save it as a jpg.

Or shoot in RAW and then adjust afterwards.