and his images were sharp!

yesterday, the boy, the designer, titi, and i went on a photo expedition. when i got home and looked at the photos from my 100 lens, i was extremely disappointed. i couldn't figure out why they were so blurry and out of focus. i thought, am i getting old? do i shake that much?

but then i thought, i take a lot of photos without flash and i normally don't have an issue with extremely blurry photos. i certainly do not shake more than the average person. yesterday was a beautiful day, my shutter speeds were appropriate, and there was definitely enough light for a sharp image.

and i've read a ton of glowing reviews about this lens: the fast focusing, the sharpness. these reviews are all over the internet - people literally raving about the lens. i looked at sample images and thought, "this lens can do that?" based on my experience yesterday, i couldn't fathom it.

so i decided it must be the lens. i must have gotten a defective lens.

i woke up early this morning to test it. i shot in auto because i thought maybe my manual settings were off. surely in the bright light, auto would produce sharp images. they looked fine on my camera's screen when i reviewed them. i thought, "whew, it was just me"... but when i looked at the photos on robot, they were as blurry as ever.

so that confirmed to me that it must be the lens. i must have gotten a defective lens.

i ranted to the boy even though i knew he was trying to fall back asleep. well, i didn't exactly rant... i just said, "i think my lens is defective." being a boy, and a natural problem solver, and a bit of a camera geek, he immediately put on his glasses and got out of bed. he took off the filter (we had just put one on most of our lenses) and went out to test it.

and his images were sharp!

i've always had a sinking suspicion about filters interfering with focus and image sharpness. it's not anything that's proven through education or any form of reading but rather just a gut feeling. titi mentioned that a low quality filter might ruin images but i can't justify spending $200 on a good filter. especially when i am suspicious of them in the first place.

here are some samples of the images i took this morning, with and without the filter. this is not entirely scientific because i didn't take the photos for the purpose of this blog entry (i.e. i didn't ensure that the framing, exposure, etc. are the same for each set of images) but i think the difference is clearly a focusing issue. for all of the photos below, i was trying to get a clear, sharp image.






the final verdict? i've taken the filters off my 50 and 100 lenses. the glass is receded and i'll just be careful with the lenses. i'm keeping the one on the wide angle because the glass is almost flush with edge of the lens and because it doesn't seem to affect image quality. that being said, i now feel much more comfortable with the 100 lens - i'm going to take it out again today to give it another try.