First Telephoto Attempt (Second Attempt Added)

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Kyuss

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From my local nature reserve today. I tried to shoot a variety of species with limited success...the robin’s were definitely most obliging! Obviously got a lot of practising to do to get up to the standard of images on here, but I was relatively happy with this attempt :)
 
Always lovely to see a Robin :)
Telephotos take practice ... keep it up!
 
There are some good points to these - the near eye level shooting is a big plus, decent light, clear backgrounds are all good.

However, there is an issue with the sharpness which we could help you with if you give us a few more details - shutter speed and aperture, ISO, camera body and lens, AF mode used and the amount of crop would all be helpful to know so we can point you in the right direction

Mike
 
pooley said:
There are some good points to these - the near eye level shooting is a big plus, decent light, clear backgrounds are all good.

However, there is an issue with the sharpness which we could help you with if you give us a few more details - shutter speed and aperture, ISO, camera body and lens, AF mode used and the amount of crop would all be helpful to know so we can point you in the right direction

Mike
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Thanks for your offer of help and advice Mike

I’m using a Canon 200D body, Canon 75-300mm EF f4-5.6. Shutter speed 1/500, aperture f5.6, ISO 1000 (auto) and multi-point AF (I did switch this to single point later on - I’ll add an example photo below).

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Kyuss said:
Thanks for your offer of help and advice Mike

I’m using a Canon 200D body, Canon 75-300mm EF f4-5.6. Shutter speed 1/500, aperture f5.6, ISO 1000 (auto) and multi-point AF (I did switch this to single point later on - I’ll add an example photo below).

View attachment 117819
Click to expand...

I think the final point above will be the important one here - for perched birds I'd almost always go with a single AF point placed on the eye of the bird, and use continuous AF. Some people will recommend not using continuous, but with little birds like this, they're almost always moving a little bit, and certainly enough to make the shot soft

The other settings look close to being what I'd use, (possibly a higher ISO to get a higher shutter speed, but I clean the subsequent higher ISO noise in PP).

Keep posting them up and hopefully some good advice will be coming back to you

Mike
 
Hi Oli,

Good to see you going out again - especially in this weather! It looks to me like the focus point isn't landing directly o the birds eye, and this is causing the softness in some of the shots. If you look on the first of your latest shots, you'll see the grass towards the bottom right of the shot are sharper than the bird, my guess is that is where the focus point has landed on that occasion.

Contrast that to the second robin, and look at the sharpness of the eye and the feather detail there - it is much improved.

Keep at it, it'll soon all fall together

Mike
 
I have to take my hat off to you as small birds are not easy at all. Mike's advice is sound and he can advise you better than I can. One thing I've noticed though looking at these is that the light is quite poor and being difficult subjects to get critically sharp, light is your friend. There's a limit but faster shutter speeds will give you a better chance and this is where good light comes in.

The robin is the sharpest of the set , the wing feathers are pretty sharp and it's better light than the rest which I think has helped you. I think your camera may have focused on those feathers as they are the sharpest part of the robin.

I tend to auto focus most of the time, then tweak the focus manually. Not all lenses allow this but if you can, give it a try. This isn't easy either in the heat of the moment but it can be done. This is how I do it a lot of the time but it may not work for everybody as we all have our ways.

Keep it up, as Mike says, it will come together and practice is the only way.
 
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I think your SS is marginal/too slow for your handholding technique/capability. For 300mm on 24MP APS I would want a minimum of 1/800 handheld. I would also not want to be wide open w/ that lens, f/8 minimum (f/11 max). That means you need better light or you need to push the ISO.
 
Thank you so much for all your feedback chaps, it’s much appreciated!

I’ve been out again this weekend, sadly again in rather poor light, so have taken all your advice on board, not restricted the ISO and hope this has given slightly better results. I’ll be interested to hear your feedback :)
 
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