How do I get sharper images? NX1100

CMurdock wrote:

I photograph and sell colorful products. I recently purchased the NX1100 because it has good color accuracy. It came with the 20-50mm kit lens. My photos are not coming out as sharp as the photos I was getting from my old Canon point-and-shoot camera, and I'm wondering if there is anything that I can do about it.

To be specific, I sell colorful glass beads at www.purebeads.com. The composition of my photos isn't important; all that's important is that I post an accurate picture of the beads. I will lay a "hank" of beads out on a white dinner plate, and then photograph it from about 18 inches above (I do all this in front of a window using natural daylight). My camera settings are wide angle and Program mode, and I let the camera select the ISO. I'll take 8 different photos at 3 different exposure-compensation settings.

Sometimes the entire plate of beads will come out slightly soft (soft, not blurry). At other times, the outer edges of the beads will come out soft. And if I don't hold the camera perfectly over the plate, sometimes one side of the beads will be softer than the other. How do I get all the beads to be in perfect focus?

I'm a pretty smart person, but I've never fully understood the relationship between aperture size and shutter speed, etc. If I should be taking my shots in A or S mode, I'm not aware of that. Or perhaps I shouldn't be using wide angle (if I zoom in too much, I don't get everything in the shot).

Thanks for any help you can give me.

1. Get a tripod, if you don't already have one. Something around $15-30 could do well--just read reviews, as some are better quality than others. A ball head tripod is easier to deal with for a first tripod.

2. Use Aperture Priority (A) mode. Set the aperture to f/8 or f/9 (greater depth of field, but don't need to go smaller than that) when you want to show most of the shot in focus or maximum size aperture (say f/3.5 at 20mm) when you want to focus on a certain area and blur everything beyond it. Larger apertures will give you that artsy looking background blur. Smaller apertures will give greater depth of field to bring more in focus.

3. Set ISO to 100

4. Set your shots to a timed mode: a timer of say 2 seconds. Set your camera on a tripod, set up your scene, focus, press the shutter button, and don't touch the camera / shake the area around the tripod by taking steps until the camera takes a photo. At ISO 100, it may well be that exposures will be long, and your shots will be prone to camera shake if you try them hand-held.  You may want to use full manual focus for this to make sure the exact area you want in focus is the sharpest.

That should give you what you want.