Sharpness
A quick post to (hopefully) improve the sharpness of your film photos.
1. Use a tripod. This is probably the best thing you can do to make your photos sharp. Your hands are always moving, and that means your camera is always moving if you’re not using a tripod. Remember that a photograph always represents a “slice” of time, so you should do whatever you can to ensure that the camera is motionless during that time if you can. If a tripod is unfeasible, a monopod is also an improvement. Otherwise, hold your camera as steadily as you can while you shoot.
2. Use a cable release. More vibration is introduced when you use your finger to push the shutter button. With a shutter release cable, the button is pressed off the camera body and transferred either through a mechanical cable extension or electronically. Thus, there is virtually no additional movement when the shutter fires. An added bonus is that virtually all cable releases feature a lock in case you want to do very long exposures. (E.g., fire the shutter, go eat some pizza, come back, and end the exposure.)
3. Use f/8 or f/11. These are allegedly the sharpest apertures to use for lenses that narrow down to f/22. Sadly, I don’t know enough about optics to tell you why. I imagine it might have to do with diffraction being minimized. Anyway, assuming your subject is stationary, use a longer exposure time so you can use this optimal aperture. Note that a large format user once told me that f/22 is sharper for large format photography. I think both optima are toward the middle of the respective aperture scales for their particular lens.
4. Use the mirror lock-up. When you release the shutter, the mirror on an SLR camera flips up to let light pass through to the film. This introduces very small vibrations to the camera, and you’ll lose a small bit of sharpness. Most SLR cameras have a lock-up function that you can activate before opening the shutter so that you can alleviate the vibration before your image capture. The downside is that you can no longer use the viewfinder, so be sure to compose beforehand. Alternatively, you could use a TLR or rangefinder, neither of which use mobile mirrors.
5. Use medium format or better. Ok, this doesn’t improve sharpness as much as it does resolution. 35mm film can only capture so much detail due to its size and the size of the grain on the film. (35mm still offers way better resolution when scanned than most consumer-grade digital cameras.) Medium format or even large format has a much larger image area, thereby allowing more details to be recorded on the film. It’s sort of like upgrading from a 640×480 monitor to a 1600×1200 monitor. Slower film also improves resolution, as the grain is finer.
6. Use a super-sharp lens. I’ve seen sharpness tests using Rolleiflexes, Mamiyas and Hasselblads – all medium format cameras. The sharpness didn’t vary much at all. However, I can also say that my 50mm f/1.4 on my Canon EOS camera beats the living hell out of the kit lens that originally came with it. This, however, is the most expensive option I’ve mentioned in this list. (Assuming you already have a camera that shoots a larger format than 35mm, of course.)
Example photograph: This was shot on Kodak Portra 400 film. The camera was a Hasselblad 500 C/M with a Carl Zeiss 80mm Planar CF f/2.8 lens. I probably used f/11 or f/8 as the working aperture. The camera was on a relatively inexpensive Slik tripod. The mirror was locked up, and I used a mechanical shutter release cable. I’ve included the overall image, as well as one that shows a 100% zoom in to the 3200 dpi scan.
