better sharpness on p100-400mm over 100-300mm mk2?

633 squadron wrote:

Hello everyone,l just finished sorting through and editing my photos from RIAT. i was using the Panasonic G7 along with the 100-300mm mk2. I was very happy with the results i was getting but... i wasn't exactly blown away by the sharpness that i was getting. [...] I hope you enjoy looking at my photos and thanks for any advice in advance.

This is a bit long, but hopefully you'll find it useful.

This looks pretty good. There's some noise that I'll discuss later.

This one is simply destroyed by noise reduction. Hard to judge how the lens performed here.

This one looks pretty good. A bit too much sharpening, which made noise look like grain and created unpleasant halos along the edges and accentuated chromatic aberration as a bonus.

Same as above, basically. For scenes when subjects are at significantly different focal planes (distance from you), make sure you have enough depth of field. Looks fine on this one.

Another one destroyed by noise reduction, which makes it look as if there was some sort of art filter applied to it. Hard to tell how the lens did on this, but I suspect it's not bad.

Looks like a pretty considerable crop, which always makes things harder. A bit too much noise reduction, but not bad for a crop, I'd say.

Much better processing on this one. Seems a bit soft, but not sure if motion blur or something else.

Too much local contrast boosting (clarity or whatever it's called in the software you use), which creates those darker outlines around the white smoke trails and lighter outlines around the planes. This shows one of the weaknesses of that lens, which is purple fringing on strongly lit (or back-lit) subjects.

Summary: apart from the ones with some excessive processing, the rest looks good full screen on my 15" retina screen. In short, they would look perfectly fine on a A4 print. I think better processing can still improve things, and you could also improve some things on the capture end. Overall, I'd say not bad at all. You definitely got some nice keepers there and I'm sure you will get more and better next time.

Now on to general tips.

If you have enough light and shooting at 300mm, stop down to at least f/6.3 or preferably to f/7.1. While at 300mm it never really gets super sharp, there is a noticeable improvement from f/5.6. Not a world of a difference, but enough to see in a real photo. Also, try to keep the subject in the center of the frame, or at least make sure it doesn't drift too close to the edges. Basically the softness at the edges and corners does not go away with stopping down and CA is pretty massive there, which is especially problematic for high contrast scenes.

For most of those shots, you should have had exposure compensation set to +1 or even more. Basically, when you are photographing a greyish plane on a grayish sky/clouds, your camera's metering system will most likely cause the camera to underexpose the scene. Pay attention to the histogram. In some of the shots above you could have significantly reduced noise in the shadows (which was basically most of the plane) by overexposing, thus reducing the need for NR that destroys detail.

Panasonic 100-300 II is prone to shutter shock. Not sure how the situation looks like with G7, but on both my Olympus cameras I can see clear blurring in certain shutter speeds. I have not verified if it affects really fast shutter speeds or how that would play out during continuous shooting (I use EFCS or electronic shutter on my E-M1 II, which seems to completely eliminate the problem). You might want to do some tests to verify if this is an issue for you or not.

Make sure that stabilisation does not work against you.

And of course processing. You can both make things a lot better or ruin them. It takes experience and some serious learning to master the tool you are using to process your photos. But in the end, you should aim for something that is pleasing to you, not necessarily what others tell you.

And sometimes there's not much you can do. Hot shimmering air, smoke that limits contrast and visibility, shooting against the sun or simply the plane being too far away.

As for the gear.

Yes, the 100-400 would improve the quality. First of all, it would be better at 300mm. But more importantly, it would allow you to zoom in further, so much less cropping, which has clear negative consequences on image quality.

I'd say camera is less critical in your case. Sure, a newer model would eliminate the possibility of shutter-shock happening. But if you get to know how your camera behaves in this regards, this is probably not going to be an issue. More pixels sounds great as well, but 20mp vs 16mp isn't such a big deal as to make a world of a difference when cropping. Also, with this lens at 300mm, AA filter or lack thereof makes little to no difference. I think you'd need a lot sharper lens to see the effect of AA filter on photos.

Would G9 increase your success rate and offer better image quality? Yes. But I doubt it would be such a big step up as to immediately make all your photos better. That's unlikely. So might not be worth the cost, at least until other aspects are sorted out.