9 Tips to Take Tack Sharp Photos Every Time

If you want to get tack sharp photos, then you need to do more than nail your focus. We'll reveal what you need to know.

Getting tack sharp photos takes a combination of factors. Yes, you need to get your focus correct, but that does you little good if you have shaky hands with a slow shutter speed. To get tack sharp photos, you need to eliminate as much motion as possible.

Here's how you do it.

1: Watch Your Shutter Speed

If you're shooting hand-held, then you need to consider how much your hands shake. Maybe you don't perceive it, but the human body is always in motion. Minor tremors in your hand travel to the camera body and move the camera around.

The faster your shutter speed, the less impact your hand shake will have on your photos. An old rule to use is to have a shutter speed that is AT LEAST the same as your focal length. The longer your focal length, the more susceptible your camera is to shaky hands.

If you have a 200 mm lens, then you want to have a minimum of 1/200th of a second shutter speed. If you have a 35mm lens, then you can get away with a minimum of 1/35th of a second shutter speed.

These are minimums you should use. Faster shutter speeds are always better, but not at the expense of high ISO (more on that later).

2:  Each Lens has a Sweet Spot Aperture for Sharp Photos

It would be nice if every aperture on a lens was as sharp as all of the others. Life doesn't work that way, though. I could tell you that it's physics, but I'm not a physicist. I'm a realist. The reality is that different apertures provide different levels of sharpness.

When you use a wide aperture, you see bokeh in the background of your subject. Clearly, that isn't your sharpest aperture if part of the photo is blurry. It doesn't mean that your photo isn't usable or even desirable, though. The trick is to see which aperture is sharpest on your point of focus, now the entire image.

So how do you find out which aperture is the sharpest on your lens?

You need to test every aperture on your lens with a known target. To be precise, you can use a lens calibration tool like this one: .

If you aren't in the mood for that level of precision, post a newspaper on the wall. It isn't as precise, but it's a place to start.

With your camera on a tripod, get the entire target or newspaper in the whole frame. Then take a photo of the subject with each aperture.

Next, import your photos to your computer and zoom in to 100% to review the photos. You'll be able to compare the results and determine the sharpest aperture for your lens.

Of course, the sharpest aperture on one lens may not be the same on another. You'll have to repeat this process for each lens if you want to know the sweet spot.

3:  Avoid High ISO

This may or may not be obvious to everyone, but high ISO reduces the quality of your photos. The noise or grain you see in high ISO photos robs you of detail and clarity. If you want to have tack sharp photos, they need to be clean. Shoot at the lowest ISO you can manage.

Noise reduction software is not your friend. It blurs your images and reduces sharpness. There is no magic software that restores sharpness that you missed at the time of capture.

4: Use a Tripod and Shutter Release

If you can use a tripod and shutter release, use it. It doesn't eliminate movement of your subject, but it greatly reduces shake and vibration on your camera lens.

We already went over hand shake on your camera just by holding it. That hand shake also travels to the camera when you press the shutter. By using a tripod and shutter release, you remove your hand shake and vibration from the mix and increase your odds of getting tack sharp photos.

Not every type of photography works with a tripod, though. You may be able to compensate for hand shake by using image stabilization (also calle...