READ THIS FIRST - Posting guidelines

[Damien Symonds]

If you're fairly new to photography, it's easy to doubt and second-guess the focus of your images.  "Is this photo sharp enough to keep?" is the first and most important question you must ask yourself when you get home from a shoot.  If you're not sure, I can help.

Please follow these guidelines before posting:

1. The culling process is SO important, before you begin editing.  You can watch an example culling process here.  Make sure you've rejected all the obviously bad ones before doing anything else.
2. Do your raw processing before posting.  White balance, exposure, and so on.  Most importantly, remove the noise!  This is vital.  Focus cannot be judged while noise is present.  Don't just reduce some of the noise.  ALL of it must go.

When you post in this forum, I need three things:

1. The whole photo (with the raw editing done, remember).
2. A 700x700 pixel 100% crop.  This must be done in Photoshop or Elements.  If you don't do this part correctly, I will ignore your post.  This is a low-priority forum for me, so the onus is on you.
3. The details of the shot - the aperture, shutter speed, and ISO.  You can type them if it suits you, or take a screenshot of them in your raw software, like this:

I've provided an example post here.

Once you've posted, when I have a minute, I'll take a look and tell you if the focus is good enough to go ahead and finish editing the photo, or if you should cull it.

Some related reading:

• What you see when you pixel-peep
• If it doesn't rock, don't show it!
• Posting for critique on focus and noise
• A plea to all photographers
• How big can I print?
• How aggressively can I crop?

[Janet Zimmer]

Damien, if we may crop the image rather substantially, do you also need to see a cropped version of the image?

[Damien Symonds]

1 minute ago, Janet Zimmer said:

Damien, if we may crop the image rather substantially, do you also need to see a cropped version of the image?

Yeah, that's not a bad idea I guess.

Make sure you have satisfied yourself with the "How aggressively" link (above) before you post, though.