Can't tell if my lens is broke or if I'm rubbish (1 Viewer)

Here's my latest shots. Any advice would be appreciated.


Shutterspeed 1/1600
Iso 400
F5.6

Retrodaz said:

Here's my latest shots. Any advice would be appreciated.

View attachment 539874
Shutterspeed 1/1600
Iso 400
F5.6

Click to expand...

I think you've missed focus on the bird, and instead focused on the group of leaves in front.

Your pictures from 22-Mar are a decent set. The hovering gull is spot on; the mallard is perfect focus on the beak, but the shallow depth of field means the eye is very slightly out of focus; and similarly the black headed gull the focus is on the near side of the body which means again the eye is again very slightly out of focus.
These shots show how shallow the depth of field is at f5.6 and once you know how bright the light is you can then choose between shutter speed and aperture. For example the mallard shuter speed is 1/1600 and my personal preference would be to risk a slight bit of blur in the wing by dropping the shutter to 1/800 (or 1/1000) and having a narrower aperture to increase chance of getting that eye in focus.
But all the above is being hypercritical (I am my worst own enemy for that!!) - in most cases the eye is critical and the impact of getting the eye in focus is huge (check the hovering gull) so I think it is worth aiming for. But your photos are about the same standard I achieve most times and I have been trying for a few years now so you are not alone!

Your last post, I agree with Chris it looks like focus is on the leaves/flower in the foreground. I am also guessing from the visible noiose at ISO 400 that this was a heavy crop. Sometimes you just have to accept the limitations of the photo and crop less and without knowing how comples the background is I think this is one of those cases - sometimes the shot looks better for it

Thanks for the input. It's hard focusing on the eye, but i see what you mean with those gull shots. I was about 16 foot away from the chiffchaff. Will try and dig the original shot out.

Retrodaz said:

when you mean wrong spot do you mean the sun is in front of me? I can't remember where it was, all I remember is my first Dartford Warbler
Here's a non-cropped image that I've resized
View attachment 519435

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From my perspective this is the biggest reason photos look poor in quality. You need to work on getting closer to your subjects to fill the frame as much as possible and use a technique called shoot to the right (using the histogram) while shooting RAW files to ensure you capture the best possible quality data on your sensor. Those two simple things will make far better quality images in the long run.

Your 400/5.6L lens has killer optics. :t:

Retrodaz said:

Here's my latest attempt.
Shot in AV
1/100
F5.6
Iso 800
View attachment 520189

It was a really overcast day and I had ISO on auto.
I was right on top of it and it's still not looking sharp. I really don't know what I'm doing wrong

Click to expand...

You need a shutter speed of at least 1/1000th to take sharp shots. You need to understand that. It is that simple. Once you gain experience then you can push your limitations.

I have no problem taking sharp images using my 500mm f/4L IS lens even with a 2x hand holding at 1/160th! But that takes many years of experience and solid long lens hand holding technique.

Honestly, the more you practice, the better you will be at this frustrating thing called bird photography.

Thanks for the advice Mr Birdman. I do feel my more recent shots are getting better. I'm struggling with the shooting to the right technique though. I need to do some more reading up on it.
Also with that Dartford Warbler I was pretty much at the low end of my camera (around 16foot) meaning I couldn't have gotten it bigger in frame if I tried .