Help with Canon 100-400L lens - please?

[countrybum]

I just got this lens a couple of weeks ago and I am having a hard time getting really clear, crisp photos that I think this lens is capable of and I'm not sure what I am doing wrong. I suspect that my shutter speeds are too slow but I'm not sure how fast they need to be to get a good clear picture. Also, how much USM should I need to use in Photoshop?

I am using a tripod and recently bought a remote release thinking that maybe I was shaking the camera with the shutter but that doesn't seem to make much difference. I've tried both modes of IS and not seeing any help there.

If any one cares to share any pictures, preferably unedited, I would really appreciate it, maybe my expectations are too high. I've seen some absolutely stunning photos with this lens so I'm guessing it's my ineptitude.

Thanks in advance.
Jean

[Tyger]

Hey CB,

I have recently got this lens and love it. It has gotten me some great pics, i only have a few on this gallery http://www.birdforum.net/pp_gallery/showgallery.php/cat/500/ppuser/32964

These were cropped and post processed a little to get a little more colour and a little usm. Perhaps you can post a pic for us to see and share your EXIF data.

Chances are you are using a slow shutter speed. What mode are you shooting in? AV? TV? What camera do you have?

Personally I shoot mostly in TV and set my shutter speeds anywhere from 800-1250 give or take depending on the shot using IS mode 1. The faster the shutter speed the more you can "freeze" action. Depending on the lighting too you have to adjust your ISO accordingly. In bright sunny days you can use 100-200 ISO, in shady conditions you can go from 400-800 and if it's really dark...well not night time but areas where there is no available light you might have to go up to 1600. If you like to shoot in AV to get faster shutter speeds in poor lighting you would have to up your ISO.

Also i have read that if you are using a tripod to turn IS off, but others leave it on...worth a shot though.


Hope that helps some.

[compa]

Tyger's advise is about what I have to say ... keep the shutter speed up - with the 100-400mm lens, at least 1/400 second (and 1/1000 is better). If using a tripod, turn the IS off. The lens is a bit sharper if you close it down to f/6.3 or 7.1. The remote release never hurts (I use one most of the time).

How much sharpening depends on the amount of detail in the image ... and every one is different. Also the final size of the photo affects the amount of sharpening needing to be applied.

[countrybum]

Tyger, thanks for the photos, you've got some really good shots there. You are getting the crispness that I am still trying to get.
Compa, I crusied through your blog - very nice! I hope you are feeling better after your surgery.

I am using a Rebel XT and use the TV mode. Honestly I haven't used an ISO of 800 much, it seems like it gets really grainy when I do. I was reserving that option for that bird that you just gotta get no matter what, but right now I am practicing on the yard birds. Unfortunately I got this lens during the darkest month of the year for us, and it is turning out that there are few days when there is good light and I have time and the birds cooperate. Not having had a lens this big before I guess I didn't realize how much light was needed to get through that long barrel.

Here is a picture that I took yesterday using an ISO of 400 and a shutter speed of 1/250 and a fstop of 5.6. It was a pretty bright day but alot of shadows where I was taking pictures. I guess I will just have to get closer on these dark days and pull back the zoom so I can get a faster shutter speed and better f-stop.

Thanks for the help, I am trying very hard to patiently learn to use this great lens. I will keep trying!

[Ashley beolens]

The Is on these lenses can cause problems when used on a tripod (source a photographic forum) where the lens still tries to adjust for IS and ends up giving a "soft feeling" to the images, try turning it off when on the tripod, and see what you get?

[SMC2002]

CB,
I think you have lots of factors at work here. Your pic isn't "soft" and just needs a bit of tweaking using levels and USM. It's hard to work with heavily compressed images of this size (tons of artifacts around the edges of the subject :-(, but I did play with your Carolina Wren. I might have gone a bit too far with USM (266, .3, 0) but I didn't see any sharpening halos. But it sure brought out the noise. I had to apply USM as a layer and erase the background because of the noise.

As mentioned, try shooting with IS off. Try for the highest speed you can get with the lowest ISO setting. A major trade off. But you have an IS lens which will allow slower handhled speeds, and you are shooting from a tripod which can allow slower speeds also (for sitting ducks, not for birds in flight). I shoot handheld and or sitting/roosted targets, I try to use 1/500+ speeds. For birds in flight I use 1/1000 or faster speeds. So yes, even using the nice 400mm F5.6L, I am usually shooting at ISO400 or ISO800. Now with you lens being mounted to a tripod, you can go much slower (take into account that the bird may also move). Like 2 stops slower than my 1/500, or 1/125, for sitting targets. Which also means, if they are well lit you can dial back your ISO to 200 :-) Another point to consider, I'm not sure how sharp the 100-400mm IS is wide open. Zooms, and even some primes, tend to be less sharp at max aperture. You can test this by shooting the same subject at F5.6 and stopped down to F8. You may only have to stop down 1/3 or 2/3 of a stop (F6.3, or F7.1) to get a noticeable improvement in sharpness.

Also, you are shooting small birds with a 400mm lens (OK, a 640mm FOV on the 350D). Even with this focal length, small birds will still only occupy a small portion of the image. The smaller area they occupy, the more aggressively one has to crop. When you crop, and as you approach 100% size, image noise will be more visible and because the image doesn't contain many pixels of data, you may not have a lot of subject detail to work with. Viewing your Wren and knowing you shot it wide open, one can see that he didn't fill much of the frame origianally. His whole body is within the focus zone. If you were close, the in focus area would be much smaller at this focal length.

I think your Wren may not have filled enough of the frame and so you had to aggressively crop and while there is detail present, not as much as you would see if he filled more of the original frame. That's why many people shoot with teleconverters. Not necessarily for being able to capture birds that are farther away. But more to make the birds they capture now, look larger in the captured image. The more of the view finder your images fills, the better detail you will capture.

Anyhow, I have typed way too much and you are probably more confused than ever....lol I did see another post by you a few days ago, essentially asking the same sort of question. I thought that you were trying to eat the whole elephant in one bite.....lol I tried to give you a small bit of information to digest, and apply. That's what it's all about. Shooting, analyzing your results, and then trying to correct what your analysis showed you fell short on :-)

I hope this makes sense. A forum is a tough place to convey this amount of information. Like I wrote, I hope I didn't confuse you even more....lol

Good luck
Steve

[QuantumTiger]

I am using a Rebel XT and use the TV mode. Honestly I haven't used an ISO of 800 much, it seems like it gets really grainy when I do. I was reserving that option for that bird that you just gotta get no matter what
I'd say ISO400 is the highest you can get away without using some kind of noise reduction software. But ISO800 is surprisingly usable if you pass the image through Noise Ninja (or similar) - and sometimes the weather gives you no options!

I use the 400mm f5.6 & tend to shoot Av mode, to get the fastest shutter speed possible, but keep an eye on the shutter speed offered and up the ISO when I need to.

[countrybum]

No, Steve, you are not confusing me, it is definitely helping me - having so much of it consolidated together in one place (I know that's impossible without writing a book, which you just about did and I do appreciate) instead of bits and pieces here and there. I apologize if I repeated myself on another post, I'm trying to focus on one problem at a time but obviously they all play in to each other. I am beginning to see that I need to go about this in a more methodical way, changing one factor at a time and see the results for myself under different situations. I will work on the picture more, I did not realize that you could use a fraction of a pixel, I was always using 1 and rarely used an amount more than 100.

QT, thanks for the tip on NoiseNinja. I had tried NeatImage but just the trial software and didn't really give it much time to learn it.

The consensus seems to be to have the IS turned off when using the tripod.

Of course, today was a bright sunny day so I attempted to go out at lunch and try some of your suggestions. After walking a short ways into the park, I discovered I have a hole in my shoe and ended up with muddy socks so I had to leave and go buy some dry socks - unfortunately the shoe budget got eaten up with the lens budget :^).

[SMC2002]

CB,
I believe Canon recommends that you use sharpening settings of around .3, 300, 0. I read that in an article by Chuch Westfall (a Canon US VP). This will vary with the size of the final image and whether any in-camera sharpening has been applied. Once you have down-sized your image for web presentation, shapening should be applied as a final step. Even an in-cam sharpened jpg can oftentimes need additional sharpeng once down-sized.

If you will be doing heavy cropping of high ISO shots, and we all do....lol, your really need to get familar with noise reduction software. It really isn't that tough to learn. If you apply the results as a mask, you can always erase areas where the NR has blurred detail too much. When I use it, it's because I cropped an ISO800 shot heavily. Sky noise tends to be a problem, at almost any ISO setting.

IS can work on a tripod, especially the panning mode IS. But, you are trying to eliminate variables one by one. So, until you find the source of the problem and start getting the results you expect, I'd leave that variable out of the equation. Just my opinion.

I forgot to mention THE most important thing to remember when you are out shooting birds. Have Fun :-) :bounce:

Steve

[countrybum]

I went back to the original picture of the wren and tried your suggested sharpening settings in PS and it helped some (I think the detail just isn't there ) but then I tried it on this picture of a red fox that I took this morning and boy what a difference it made! I am so excited! This picture was taken early this morning and the fox was pretty far away (I'm guessing 100 feet???) and I think the shutter was a little slow but I am amazed at the detail in the leaves. I definitely saw a difference in waiting to apply the sharpening until you reduced the picture. Now I want to go back and re-do all the pictures that I have taken to see what a difference it makes! Thanks to all!

[QuantumTiger]

I definitely saw a difference in waiting to apply the sharpening until you reduced the picture. Now I want to go back and re-do all the pictures that I have taken to see what a difference it makes!!
Sharpening works by darkening one side of an edge and lightening the other, and it tends to emphasze unwanted noise or jpg artifects as well as detail. The reason you sharpen only once and leave it to last, is because you don't want to emphasize these unwanted details before changing the contrast, levels or colour balance of the image, which will make them worse.

Noise reduction software tends to soften the image, so most noise reducing packages offer the option to sharpen after removing the noise. I turn this off, because I want to apply my own sharpening later.

The general approach therefore is noise reduce first, because this minimizes artifects, then apply levels, contrast, and colour corrections, make any other alterations you want to, then resize or crop and finally sharpen.

With particularly noisy images you may want to increase the threshold a little, since this minimises noise sharpening whilst still retaining edge sharpening. I tend to leave threshold value on zero where possible and increase to 2 or 3 when absolutely necessary.

When you resize an image, photoshop resamples all the pixels, and this generally tends to undo the effects of any sharpening you may apply. In the resize panel you get a number of options. The advice I have been given (which seems to work) is that you should choose bicubic smoother when increasing the size of an image and either bicubic or bicubic sharper when decreasing the size of an image.

If you've not given it a go yet you should check out the effects of enlarging a cropped image in photoshop before printing it. Enlarging up to about 200% using bicubic smoother, and then applying a USM with a radius around the 1 pixel value surprisingly good results. Above 200% it starts to loose rather too much in the way of quality. I tend to find that the softer the starting image is, the larger the radius of USM I need (up to about 1.5 pixels).

Final sharpening tip is that when previewing the effects of sharpening you should always zoom in to 100%, even if that means you're seeing only a fraction of the image. You just can't estimate what effect sharpening is having on the balance between wanted/unwanted detail any other way.

Hope some of this helps.

(Edit: Oops - silly typo)

[Tannin]

Excellent advice from Quantum Tiger. I'll just add an exception to the general rule. Sometimes, if you are trying to do something with a not-so-good image (maybe it's a rare bird and that was the only shot you have of it), it's good to sharpen fairly harshly first to bring up the detail, then re-size, and finally sharpen mildly. You need to experiment to work out where in this sequence you do the noise reduction - i.e., do it several ways and then compare.

But note that this is very much an exception, really only of use when your detail resolution is poor (bad light is the primary cause here) and you need to bring it up before you resize because otherwise the resize will kill the detail. Don't worry about the first step (the initial strong sharpen) looking terrible, which it will. Keep on with the other steps and then decide if the final result is better or worse than the normal method.

[SMC2002]

CB,
I agree with Tannin and QT. The more images you post process and resize, the more comfortable you will get with sharpening.

Nice fox pic ^5 The difference is how much of the frame he filled. If your subject fills quite a bit of the frame/VF, you will get fantastic detail. Lighting is also key. Front lit subjects will not usually show as much detail as side lit subjects. This is something you can see looking through the VF.

Also, animal fur tends to show more detail from farther away than bird feathers (unless the bird is real big).

Again, good work on the fox!

Steve

[stuartlawrie]

A very good tip from a Scott Kelby book which I find very good when carrying out a heavy crop on an image and then resizing, don't use the crop tool with settings to resize the selected area back up, instead use the rectangular marque tool to put a rough selection around the area you want to keep, then choose crop from the image menu, now the really neat trick here is to bring the area upto the size you require, use the image resize option from the image menu, ensure bicubic smoother is selected, instead of upping your size in one foul swoop, go to the top section of the dialog and change from pixels to percent and input a value of 110%, this should repeat into both height and width and apply, you can now repeat this until your image is the size you require, trust me I didn't believe it till I tried it, a recent shot taken with my 1.3mp mobile phone camera was resized to A3 this way and managed to get 3rd in a recent competition (that was out of 150 images!) with the judge not even mentioning any graininess or noise artefacts etc.
I realise for a big jump in size this could be somewhat time consuming, but I have now set it up as an action and applied it to a function key in photoshop which is quick and simple to apply.

[hollis_f]

... instead of upping your size in one foul swoop, go to the top section of the dialog and change from pixels to percent and input a value of 110%, this should repeat into both height and width and apply, you can now repeat this until your image is the size you require,

I didn't believe this either - so I did a comparison between a single resize and multiple resizes of 110%. I found no difference at all. Calvin Has read my comments on DPReview and performed a better test which can be seen here (http://www.impulseadventure.com/photo/tutorial/upsize_inc_vs_direct.html)