Assuming you are interested in sharp wildlife pictures and the like. It is difficult to fix an out of focus picture with post processing and much easier to clean up a noisy picture with some of the excellent post processing software presently available. So first set your camera to shutter priority and use a sufficiently high shutter speed to overcome motion that your camera may have the capability to mitigate but not entirely. 1/1000 is a benchmark. Then use software to clean up the noise. This may result in very shallow depth of field in some circumstances due to a fully open aperture so you will find the front part of a subject in focus and the rear part not, for example. In that case switch to aperture priority and set to a higher number for those photos where it is an issue. Too high a shutter speed may result in underexposed photos in dull winter days so you may have to set the compensation to overcome or reduce the shutter speed.
Second, investigate back button focussing. There are numerous youtube and other explanations so find one for your camera assuming it has the capability. This overcomes the tendency of automatic cameras to focus on something not entirely in the desired plane like a branch in front or behind the object or to shift the focus slightly when the shutter is depressed half way on the way to snapping a photo. Basically what it involves is setting your camera to a suitable focus point, typically a centre point, using a suitably high shutter speed set manually, setting the automatic focus to continuous to track any movement of the subject, and the important move is to redefine a rear button to initiate focus. You also need to turn off the focus initiated by a half push of the shutter release. Now you have a camera that you can lock onto a subject, like a bird in a bush, by pushing the defined rear button and the camera with hold that focus plane as you take photos and not refocus just a little bit when you snap a picture making the photo frustratingly soft. By using the continuous focus feature, if you hold the back button, the camera will track a moving subject and refocus. You are still using the automatic features of the camera as is required for wildlife photography as entirely manual is typically way too slow.
For post processing, I highly recommend the products of Topaz, DenoiseAI and SharpenAI. The prices are moderate. These are AI based products with exceptional capability to clean up photos. I use these but there are other new AI based products from other suppliers recently come to market. It helps if you use RAW format to capture the photos as this gives more pixel depth to work with. There are limits with what can be done with a .jpg image. Check the computer requirements before purchasing the software,
Many (most?) digital cameras have a low pass filter that blurs the image just a bit to help overcome motion and other minor imperfections. It gives a better look to landscapes and portraits but works against a photographer looking for sharply detailed images of wildlife. This might be part of the limitation you are seeing. I am not familiar with your cameras. You have to go to a somewhat high end camera specifically selected to not have a low pass filter. The result is highly detailed photos that may show too much detail, like portrait pimples, for some photos.
Hope this helps. I am no expert but have learned this much and my photos have improved.
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Topic: Photography 101 (Read 11368 times)