Is this a pretty normal unedited photo? (3 Viewers)

[IanF]

Okay so this one was with the car engine off and I even was able to get out of the car and plant my elbows on the car roof. As you can see it is not tack sharp. f7.1, 1/1600 shutter speed, ISO 200, 400mm. I had the camera set to continuous shooting, AI Servo, Spot metering. It is weird but there is quite a bit of noise in the image which really there should be close to none with that ISO right? BTW, this is a 100% crop. I have roughly 20 of the same image that are roughly the same or slightly different trying different f-stops ranging from f6.3-8 and they are all like this.

Tomorrow I will try the tripod test as suggested. BTW I did not know about the Depth of field preview button when I took this shot and the other today.

One thing to bear in mind is to never shoot over the roof of the car is there is any heat in the day and never over the engine compartment. In fact it's better to move away from the car altogether unless you're shooting fom inside.

Heat haze from the bodywork and from the engine compartment is guaranteed to soften photos. To the naked eye the view of the bird probably
looks okay - but not to the camera.

Personally I find the depth of preview button of very limited use even when the camera is tripod mounted - though a I dare say using an eyecup to block out the light may help and probably me wearing spectacles doesn't help either.

In the photo if you look along the length of the wire you can see the effect of depth of field. The wire a few inches to the right of the bird looks sharper.
One other ting to bear in mind with depth of field is that if the bird is the point of focus it is located 2/3 of the way into the zone of sharpness. In other words 1/3 behind is in focus and 2/3 in front - if you have a decent depth of field to play with it means you can sometimes take advantage of this when composing the photo.

I wouldn't worry too much about whether using RAW or JPEG. JPEG at it's largest size produces very good results with accurate colours. RAW does nothing to help with out of focus photos. I seldom bother with RAW files.

Noise looks acceptable - it's not overly grainy and a noise filter such as NeatImage or Picturecooler would easily take care of that.

 

[DOC]

I shoot with Nikon gear and i find Ian's advice ( and all the other's ) along this thread to be of crucial importance in achieving good photos .
I shoot raw - and as Ian said - Raw has nothing to do with focus - but a Lot to do with exposure .
If a photo looks good - i go to 100% crop - if this is sharp - then the photo is worth post-processing . Otherwise - recycle bin .
Never shoot with the engine On , always try to rest the lens on a bean bag etc .
I shoot a lot of flight shots - all hand held - but i take care to keep very high shutter speeds to compensate for any slight vibrations. ( 1\1000 or higher ) .
If you cannot focus on the eye - then you are too far away. ( That doesn't mean the photo is not good ) . It'l probably demand some crop later on which can damage quality or add noise etc..
As to your question - every photo is post-processed in some way or other .

Good thread .

 

[Tim Taylor]

Lots of good advice here that I'd do well to heed too! Your shots are getting better at a great rate. For what it's worth, I ran your first heavily cropped image through 'Neat Image' using the default settings and then used 'unsharp mask' in Photoshop CS2 at 47%, radius 0.4 pixels. To my eye, some of the background granularity goes and the image is a little cleaner. However, as you have found, the thing that makes the most difference is getting close! I look forward to seeing more of your images.

Tim

 

[mike from ebbw]

Hi CCRII.Hope you dont mind but I took Tims edited version of your image and cloned out the out of focus branch behind the bird.What do you think?

I think you are doing incredibly well by the way.Especially considering the short space of time you have been this game.