Images are soft

[BobMcCarthy]

A couple of questions

Do the slides show the same softness?

Are they well exposed?

If the projected slides look fine, then you need to work on scanning. Possibly the scanner is substandard, out of focus or your not doing the best job with the scanner.

If they are soft but well exposed, is the focus correct?

If the focus is correct, then use the camera on a colorful subject, with "sharp" objects to focus on. Shoot the camera at a range of f stops and see if the lens has a range where it and you are happy.

If the exposure is off, all bets are off. Exposure and focus are "absolutely essential" to getting a good scan. Correcting poor exposure significantly in a scan can be done, but yields crappy results. Focus can be helped minimally with sharpening, but then crappy input yields crappy output.

[Amal]

hello all !!!

              Whenever I shoot the landscape photographs, it comes out softer. I use Nikon F-80 with Sigma 28-135mm f4-5.6 Aspherical IF lens and mostly Kodak Elitchrome slides. Even on using tripod, each time (in morning, day, evening), I got unsatisfactory results, but could not get the reasons ?
               Please comment what may be the reasons, either the lens itself is softer ( I generally use f8 to f22) or I am using my equipments wrongly or it is the problem with lab ?
               Again when I scan these images from the prints, it becomes more soft. I put four images for example at the link
   http://amalendusharma.fotopic.net   (I know composition is not better in these four photographs, but I put these only for showing the softness)

               Please help me in this matter, so that I can improve my work.

   Thanks and regards
    Amal