Shooting 2-3 stops from wide open is the sharpest lens resolution we can achieve. This is the sweet spot that the lens engineers designed for. If you are shooting everything at f/11 – f/32 on that $1600 Nikon or Canon L lens, your also throwing away all the fantastic detail and resolution that these engineers slaved to create.

The second trick is from the days of school. We had these two CIA tech guys give us a lecture on film and lens resolution. They took a $20 plastic Kodak 110 Instamatic film camera and a custom cut 110 sized sheet of Kodak Tech-Pan film and made a very sharp 16″ x 20″ print. We were all surprised how clear the image was from that thumbnail sized negative. The CIA method was based on very high resolution film, careful film development, shooting at the camera lenses sharpest F/stop resolution, and on a tripod with a shutter release.

Today I still use their methods but with a modern digital camera, let me explain further. The D2x has a DX sensor that is smaller than a FX or full-frame sensor. If I use full-frame film lenses then the 3/4 size sensor is only capturing the sharpest 75% center of the lens. We all know that camera lenses suffer at the edges. Full-frame lenses project an image circle that is 25% larger than a DX sensor and so we are only using the sharpest and most distortion free area of the lens. Continue reading »

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