sanderling (1 Viewer)

Settings 1/640, f5.6 ISO 125 taken with 40D + 300mm 1:4 L IS by a colleague.

When viewed @ 100% the plumage is quite sharp on my screen. I never use an ISO less than 200 and I usually hope for 1/1000 as I thought that shutter speed is the best way to "freeze" a moving bird. Please tell me how you think the sharpness of this sanderling would "probably" have been affected if it had been taken with equipment & settings as above but using ISO 200 & shutter speed 1/1000. What's getting me is that my colleague who's far away consistently gets much finer plumage detail using the above settings than I do with my settings, especially when I up my ISO above 200. Explanations would be much appreciated. Thank you all.

The difference in ISO won't affect sharpness other than in respect of affecting shutter speed. Increasing ISO will increase noise but the difference between ISO 125 and ISO 200 is negligible.

To me this looks way over sharpened. There's quite a 'halo' around the bill. Less sharpening would be a more natural and pleasing look.

If you're using the same equipment it maybe worth trying manual focus or using the liveview function if the camera is tripod mounted as you can zoom into 10x magnification for more accurate focus. Also using just the centre focus point may pick out the bird better - if you're not already using it. Of course you may not be over-sharpening your photos in any case.

As you say 1/1000 sec shutter is plenty ample for hand holding and birds on the ground. I tend to prefer 1/1250 min for birds in flight.

IanF said:

To me this looks way over sharpened. There's quite a 'halo' around the bill. Less sharpening would be a more natural and pleasing look.

Click to expand...

Agreed - this screams sharpened rather than sharp.

It's hard to comment usefully on your question without examples of your images to compare with - it might simply be a case of you needing to develop a working sharpening strategy. Or maybe your colleague is able to get closer to his birds, and so needs to crop less than you.

The point being, we need more information. There's no question about the ability of the 40D/300mm f/4 combo to produce silly-sharp images, but there's too many questions left unanswered here for any useful conclusions to be drawn.

Thank you both very much. I must learn to distinguish between "sharp" and "sharpened". Are there side-by-side examples to be studied anywhere? Perhaps from some teacher's galleries?