Trouble getting sharp images with X-T20 + XF 27mm WR (focus & recompose)

yokou · Jun 17, 2025

Hi,
I'm having trouble getting sharp pictures with my Fuji X-T20 and the XF 27mm f/2.8 WR. I took around 15 photos of birds, but only one ended up properly in focus. I'm using the focus-and-recompose method because I usually shoot one-handed and have disabled the touchscreen to avoid accidental touches.

Here’s one of the better results (first photo, focus on the first bird), and one that I find soft (second photo, focus on the first bird).
I prefocus on the subject, recompose, then fully press the shutter.
Settings were:

Auto ISO (limited to 6400)
Shutter speed set above 1/500s
Auto aperture (f/2.8 for those 2 shots)
The birds weren’t moving very fast, so motion blur is unlikely.

Light wasn’t great that day, and I’m not happy with the artistic result either — but my main concern is the sharpness.

Would you have any advice?
Thanks!

Erik Baumgartner · Jun 17, 2025

yokou said:
Hi,
I'm having trouble getting sharp pictures with my Fuji X-T20 and the XF 27mm f/2.8 WR. I took around 15 photos of birds, but only one ended up properly in focus. I'm using the focus-and-recompose method because I usually shoot one-handed and have disabled the touchscreen to avoid accidental touches.

Here’s one of the better results (first photo, focus on the first bird), and one that I find soft (second photo, focus on the first bird).
I prefocus on the subject, recompose, then fully press the shutter.
Settings were:

Auto ISO (limited to 6400)

Shutter speed set above 1/500s

Auto aperture (f/2.8 for those 2 shots)
The birds weren’t moving very fast, so motion blur is unlikely.

Light wasn’t great that day, and I’m not happy with the artistic result either — but my main concern is the sharpness.

Would you have any advice?
Thanks!

Don’t focus and recompose, Use AF-S single point, move the AF box to the desired focus point and full-press the shutter button for the best results. You can also try AF-C Wide Tracking - lock focus on the subject and recompose, this often works “OK”, but it isn’t always perfectly reliable with the X-T20.

rsn · Jun 17, 2025

Couple of suggestions. Shoot in manual for aperture and shutter speed and auto ISO. Your images are underexposed, if you had let the ISO float they wouldn't have been.

Secondly, f2.8 has a short depth of field, what's in and out of focus. In your first photo looked at in full screen, the first bird in almost in sharp focus, the others not in focus as it should be with an f2.8. It's difficult for me to say much more as I don't know what you were using as your primary focusing point.

To get everything in focus, I would have shot at f8 instead of f2.8.

yokou · Jun 17, 2025

rsn said:
Couple of suggestions. Shoot in manual for aperture and shutter speed and auto ISO. Your images are underexposed, if you had let the ISO float they wouldn't have been.

Secondly, f2.8 has a short depth of field, what's in and out of focus. In your first photo looked at in full screen, the first bird in almost in sharp focus, the others not in focus as it should be with an f2.8. It's difficult for me to say much more as I don't know what you were using as your primary focusing point.

To get everything in focus, I would have shot at f8 instead of f2.8.

Thanks for your answer.

I was in autoISO with a maximum of 6400.

My intention was to have the first bird in focus, so I pre-focused on it and then recomposed. In the first picture, it’s almost sharp; in the second, it’s noticeably soft.

Erik Baumgartner · Jun 17, 2025

yokou said:
rsn said:

Couple of suggestions. Shoot in manual for aperture and shutter speed and auto ISO. Your images are underexposed, if you had let the ISO float they wouldn't have been.

Secondly, f2.8 has a short depth of field, what's in and out of focus. In your first photo looked at in full screen, the first bird in almost in sharp focus, the others not in focus as it should be with an f2.8. It's difficult for me to say much more as I don't know what you were using as your primary focusing point.

To get everything in focus, I would have shot at f8 instead of f2.8.

Click to expand...

Thanks for your answer.

I was in autoISO with a maximum of 6400.

My intention was to have the first bird in focus, so I pre-focused on it and then recomposed. In the first picture, it’s almost sharp; in the second, it’s noticeably soft.

Focus and recompose isn’t an accurate method for focusing critically, especially at wide apertures.

yokou · Jun 17, 2025

Erik Baumgartner said:
Don’t focus and recompose, Use AF-S single point, move the AF box to the desired focus point and full-press the shutter button for the best results. You can also try AF-C Wide Tracking - lock focus on the subject and recompose, this often works “OK”, but it isn’t always perfectly reliable with the X-T20.

Thanks for you answer, I will try this.

yardcoyote · Jun 17, 2025

I use that combination frequently myself, also using focus and recompose. and I would suggest stopping down to at least f/4 to get better sharpness with this lens and also a more forgiving depth of field for this technique . F/5.6 might be better, way down to f/8 or so. My particular copy is especially good at f/4 and f/5.6. The 27 is "sharp wide open" by pancake lens standards, but it's at its best stopped down.

I find I can hand hold this setup all day at 1/60 in good light and would find 1/125 perfectly adequate for most slow moving or static subjects. This would leave you plenty of room for a smaller aperture. If you need the fast shutter for other reasons (no problem with that), then I would sacrifice ISO before shooting wide open in situations like this.

--
Instagram: @yardcoyote

FrancoD · Jun 17, 2025

Looking at the grass next to the beack I suspect that the head looks soft becaus of te bird movement rather than jut DOF . yes , I see that you are on 1/500 ....

yokou · Jun 18, 2025

FrancoD said:
Looking at the grass next to the beack I suspect that the head looks soft becaus of te bird movement rather than jut DOF . yes , I see that you are on 1/500 ....

Is 1/500s too slow in this situation? Would a faster shutter speed have helped with sharpness?

rsn · Jun 18, 2025

yokou said:
Is 1/500s too slow in this situation? Would a faster shutter speed have helped with sharpness?

When I looked at your EXIF data, I noted the 1/500 and thought that would be okay. However I am the self appointed King of Soft Photos and almost all my mistakes have been with shutter speed. Now when I am in doubt, I slap on another 1000th of a second, so in your case 1/1500, again letting the ISO float.

I do know your photos are underexposed so I was surprised when you said the camera was set to auto ISO. Something isn't right.

FrancoD · Jun 18, 2025

yokou said:
FrancoD said:

Looking at the grass next to the beack I suspect that the head looks soft becaus of te bird movement rather than jut DOF . yes , I see that you are on 1/500 ....

Click to expand...

Is 1/500s too slow in this situation? Would a faster shutter speed have helped with sharpness?

I don't know for sure but I cannot see another reason for that "soft" head. I have had photos of birds with the body sharp but a soft eye /beack area taken at even higher speeds in a similar situation to yours.

jthomas39 · Jun 20, 2025

I downloaded your photo, and examined it in FastRawViewer. That viewer is designed for raw viewing and culling, but works with jpgs too.

Here's the photo with areas of sharp, fine detail in red. That zone of focus is really shallow! (Click the "original size" view.)

FrancoD · Jun 20, 2025

jthomas39 said:
I downloaded your photo, and examined it in FastRawViewer. That viewer is designed for raw viewing and culling, but works with jpgs too.

Here's the photo with areas of sharp, fine detail in red. That zone of focus is really shallow! (Click the "original size" view.)

and that confirms what I already posted. The head of the duck is within the DOF but blurred because of movement.

rsn · Jun 21, 2025

I'm still trying to figure out why your images are so dark using auto ISO. Are you using intentionally or unintentionally single point metering?

yokou · Jun 21, 2025

jthomas39 said:
I downloaded your photo, and examined it in FastRawViewer. That viewer is designed for raw viewing and culling, but works with jpgs too.

Here's the photo with areas of sharp, fine detail in red. That zone of focus is really shallow! (Click the "original size" view.)

Thanks, that's interesting.

yokou · Jun 21, 2025

rsn said:
I'm still trying to figure out why your images are so dark using auto ISO. Are you using intentionally or unintentionally single point metering?

I wasn’t using single point metering — I had the MULTI metering mode enabled.

I was also using the Acros film simulation.

I opened the RAW file with Darktable and exported it without making any adjustments. Here is the result.

Erik Baumgartner · Jun 21, 2025

yokou said:
rsn said:

I'm still trying to figure out why your images are so dark using auto ISO. Are you using intentionally or unintentionally single point metering?

Click to expand...

I wasn’t using single point metering — I had the MULTI metering mode enabled.

I was also using the Acros film simulation.

I opened the RAW file with Darktable and exported it without making any adjustments. Here is the result.

This is a situation where some positive exposure compensation was probably a good idea - the birds are being rendered as middle grey, as you might expect. Also Darktable doesn't seem to be applying any lens corrections - which are significant for a pancake lens wide open at f/2.8, and which will contribute to the darker than normal result.

Here's a quick tweak in Lightroom with the heavy vignetting corrected and some contrast tweaks etc. This like what I'd expect to see from the XF 27 wide open with the focus off a tad - looks fine to me. Note: depth of field is significantly reduced when shooting at close range - put the AF box on the head in AF-S single point mode at full-press the shutter button for perfect focus or stop down some and hope the additional DOF spreads the area of acceptable focus around enough.

rsn · Jun 21, 2025

ACROS - black and white sim - is best used with dramatic contrasting light. When you get a scene in terms of light and tone that is the same throughout, the black and white image won't have any punch and will appear "bland."

Here are some good examples of strong contrasting light:

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Dem Bell · Jun 23, 2025

FrancoD said:
jthomas39 said:

I downloaded your photo, and examined it in FastRawViewer. That viewer is designed for raw viewing and culling, but works with jpgs too.

Here's the photo with areas of sharp, fine detail in red. That zone of focus is really shallow! (Click the "original size" view.)

Click to expand...

and that confirms what I already posted. The head of the duck is within the DOF but blurred because of movement.

This is image #1. The crop you posted is from image #2 and it shows a sharp beak, a sharp neck and the top of the head which is blurry because it sticks out of DoF. I'm struggling to see any motion blur in either image #1 or image #2.

DoF, on the other hand, even under normal viewing conditions for an APS-C shot taken from 1m away using 27mm, f/2.8 is only 14 cm. 7 cm if you pixel peep. This is what the red highlights shows.

FrancoD · Jun 23, 2025

Well, maybe Jthomas will do his test with the other photo too...

Trouble getting sharp images with X-T20 + XF 27mm WR (focus & recompose)

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