Australian Black Swan

Hi Gale, I have been looking at your bird pictures and while you compose and take them well they are all a little soft in the focus department. Are you running these through any kind of sharpening in either Nikon Capture or Photo Shop?

Like the colors in the last photo.

 

Have to agree w/Gordon here on the focus issue

I notice this a lot with your pics, certainly not every one, but a fair number of them. Since you don't post your shooting data, and it's lost in the jpg conversion/save, I can only guess what's going on here. (I have an IE plugin that reads the shooting data if it's there). I noticed this on your Vulture pic from earlier, and again on this Swan pic, but not on the Ibis' pic. Either your shutter is too slow, and you're getting motion blur... yes, it can happen even with VR, (it can't perform miracles, you know), your camera is front focussing, or possibly you're just not sharpening them enough. Not really sure what it is. Are you setting your focus reticle on their heads?

 

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I will have to say.....I have never seen a black swan before. Great shots Gale. Thanks for sharing!!

 

Interesting angle of the black. keep after them.

 

Gale,

My hands shake so bad that there is no way that I could shoot the simplest picture without a tripod or monopod. Just ask Patrick (I showed him just this morning).

I know that you don't like your current tripod, and they do tend to be on the heavy side. Have you tried a monopod? They aren't as steady as a tripod, but they make a huge difference over hand-holding, they are relatively light (around 1 lb), and you can get a really good one for about $40.

One other thing that you can do besides just using a monopod is to use a strap to make the monopod even more steady. I'm sure that you've seen my set-up (if not, here's the link - http://flew.smugmug.com/gallery/265428).

I'm shooting from a tripod now, and I do think that it is more stable, but I sure got a bunch of good pics with this monopod set-up.

Just a thought. 8)

Frank

 

Just a thought, Gale

Have you thought of pushing up the ISO more to get faster shutter speed that wouldn't be so effected by camera shake? Do you mind saying what the swan's shutter speed was?

 

Gale, ROFLMAO, to hear you use the POS wording just makes me giggle................2nd shot is great, especially a tougher exposure shot. Nicely done!!
Oh I like the third shot just as much!

 

Hi Gale, maybe its when you downsize for web that you loosing some sharpness but not your original pics. How do you downsize? Fred Miranda has a pretty good Photoshop action you may want to look at? If the downsize shot still looks a little soft, you can set your radius to .3 and play with the size until you find what you like..........

 

Hi Gale, email sent!

 

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A 500th @400mm isn't so fast

I know, I seem to be belaboring the point here Gale, so I will add these final thoughts, then forever hold my peace. You do know I'm just trying to be helpful, don't you? If you push the ISO to get consistantly very fast shutter speeds, you will not experience camera shake. Simple as that. Noise is something you can deal with in post... camera shake, you cannot. When shooting @full zoom, at least double, or better yet, triple your focal length for your shutter speed. Also stopping down that lens a little would help too. I'd like to hear what others' opinions are on this subject. Somebody back me up here!
:lol:

 

Steve,

I'll back you up 'cause you are correct, but it sounds like from Gale's replies that her originals are sharp, and that they are getting softened in the resizing step. This is a problem we all have to deal with. I've struggled with it right up until now.

When I upgraded to PS CS a few weeks ago, I immediately bought the FM Resize Pro plug-in to solve exactly this problem. I was tired of seeing sharp shots come out fuzzy when reduced for web viewing. So far, I'm very happy with the results, and it's only $24.95.

Gale, if you can let me have access to one or two of the originals (TIFF's would be the best), I'll run them through the FM process and see how they come out if you wish. Just let me know.

Regards,

Frank