[Digitalis]

ad more sharpening to my wall, and it definitely improved the result.

With ALL mainstream consumer dslr cameras you have to sharpen the output - the low pass or "AA filter" slightly blurs detail so you don't get moire, which is a PITA to remove/reduce in PP.

Brick walls are terrible subjects for sharpness testing, sometimes they aren't completely straight, sometimes they are but the lens has field curvature: just about every lens has it to some degree and that can make lenses look softer in the corners than they really are. I consider the best way to test a lens it to actually do some photography with it, use the lens at all focus distances, see how the lens handles flare by including the sun in your composition - do things like that. Brick walls can only tell you so much, usually how good the people who built your house are. Tests only have meaning when they are done properly and with high precision when the results are repeatable and empirically observable.

By the way: I think it is time you pruned your roses.

[timh]

F8, tripod, low ISO, 2 second timer, manual focus, take 5-6 shots while focusing through the likely range.

If none of them are sharp, post a 100% crop here - you've either got a lens problem or unrealistic expectations.

If one of them is sharp, your AF needs tweaking.

[vonBaloney]

Brick walls are terrible subjects for sharpness testing, sometimes they aren't completely straight, sometimes they are but the lens has field curvature: just about every lens has it to some degree and that can make lenses look softer in the corners than they really are. I consider the best way to test a lens it to actually do some photography with it, use the lens at all focus distances, see how the lens handles flare by including the sun in your composition - do things like that. Brick walls can only tell you so much, usually how good the people who built your house are.

Hmmm...I tend to take a lot of pictures of brick walls (and wooden walls) as actual subjects, i.e. not as tests. Always needs sharpening. It is very Photography 101, but I still can't resist a good bit of peeling paint, or texture on the wall of an old barn, etc. In Denver we have tons of old brick buildings with faded old painted signs and names on them. Love that stuff. I take tons of "2-D" pictures like that -- parallel to the wall and straight on...

[dragonfly]

What focus mode are you using? I find that AF-S works best for still subjects.

Also, try using the AF-IF button for focusing to assure that you aren't re-focusing while shooting your pics.

[Anvh]

Brick walls are terrible subjects for sharpness testing

You Tube

You Tube

[New Englander]

Took pics of my chimney brick about 3weeks ago. Kr, 18-135 lens. Yours are MUCH sharper than mine.
Be happy!

[BakDinitzen]

Well guys, I think I'm beginning to get the point :-) Thanks for your time - lets go out and shoot!!

[k5astro]

Thanks for all replies.
It seems, except for possible back/front focus issue and replacement of my wall , it's up to my pp skills. That certainly might be the case. I use Aperture, and don't know if it applies a certain amount of sharpening as default, but I have tried to ad more sharpening to my wall, and it definitely improved the result.

At 100% you will not get a sharp looking picture because the anti-alias filter in front of the sensor softens the original image. This is somewhat true for the full image as well. You typically have to apply sharpening in PP to compensate for the AA filter. For portraits of women, I don't sharpen so that there is a softer focus on their skin. I only sharpen their eyes. In aperture, if you apply the auto-enhance preset you will get the default sharpening which does a good job - or just apply "edge sharpen" and you will get the default. More sharpening than that should be done carefully as you can get artifacts from too much sharpening. If you were to apply enough sharpening for 100% to look sharp, your full image would be oversharp and contain artifacts.

Always shoot in RAW unless you want to use the cameras settings and JPEG as the original format but there is no reason for this. As someone mentioned, for testing, a JPEG image out of the camera will have appropriate sharpening. The only thing JPEG gets you is smaller file size but you loose flexibility and you will get degradation of the image if you do PP. Only use JPEG if you have NO plans to do PP.

Cheers!

[k5astro]

PS: Your images look OK to me.

[Giklab]

Yep. Solution: LOWER YOUR STANDARDS. Those pics are plenty sharp.