Unsharp SOOC Photos (I think): What Am I Missing?

drj3 said:

I do agree with Bast Hotep, forget BBF especially with a camera which does not have an EVF. Given the shallow depth of field, you could move the camera distance between focus and exposure enough to cause an unfocused image.

However, I disagree with some of the other comments.

There is nothing wrong with your shutter speed in the first image as long as you are capable of hand holding the camera/lens without excessive movement. The shutter speed for that image would be limited by your movement, not the birds. When a bird is watching for fish, it is almost motionless. Avoiding camera/lens movement is harder without having an EVF for three camera contact points, but I see no indication of blur from either camera or bird movement.

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I definitely feel more confident in nailing focus without the delay between BBF and shutter release, if nothing else my thumb is appreciating its newfound rest from constantly pressing the all-too-small AEL/AFL button.

drj3 said:

The depth of field is extremely shallow at your distance from the bird (probably about 9-10 inches), so focus is critical. The focus is on the rear of the bird in the first image and the feather detail (the fine white feathers where there is detail) looks like I would expect with that lighting. The front of the bird is a little out of the depth of field, but with PP it would look okay.

The second image is focused a little lower and the area behind the wings and the eye/bill both look okay. There is some bird movement blur on the wings and neck. To determine where the camera focused, compare the detail of the rocks under the bird in the first and second image (always look at the area around the target to see where the camera focused). A higher shutter speed for this image may have reduced the movement blur somewhat, but the higher ISO required would probably negate any advantage of the faster shutter speed. In general, you need shutter speeds above 1/1000 to prevent bird movement blur since you cannot pan to reduce blur with a stationary target.

The focus is fine on third, fourth and fifth images. Again, some motion blur on the third and fourth images, but I doubt a faster shutter speed would have produced much better images.

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I feel my missed focuses on last week's shots are due to my BBF and shutter release delay, but I'll try reducing my aperture even further for more forgiving DOF this week.

drj3 said:

The fifth image is very good. There is good detail in the outside fur of the cat's eye on the right side. The shallow depth of field at f1.7 limits the sharpness of the rest of the face. If you wanted the entire face in focus, then you would need to stop down the lens.

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I'm still learning my way around estimating DOF at different distances and aperture values, I found myself shooting my F1.7 primes more often than not at F2.8 when I'm not concerned with bokeh. Still, I shot the cat at F1.7 because I wanted faster SS, but I didn't know how to set my minimum shutter speed with auto ISO at that moment!

I did learn how to set minimum shutter speed with auto ISO after the cat shot, despite the E-P7 not having a correspondingly named setting. For any curious souls, the flash slow limit setting (custom menu -> E) also sets your desired minimum shutter speed with auto ISO. This isn't described in the manual at all.

drj3 said:

With a little help from PP all the images would look okay.

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Bas Hamstra said:

Plenty of tips in this thread. You say you use AF-S and back button focus and note yourself that there is a small delay between focus and take. That is not a good recipe for birds that move all the time! Why not forget BBF for a while and use continuous focus AF-C? You might also experiment with tracking mode AF (if it is there).

Try noise filter=off for best detail.

Bas

Kasuobes said:

I've been using my 40-150R this past week to practice shooting birds in the morning with longer focal lengths, and I've come across a perplexing situation where I couldn't tell why my photos look unsharp even without pixel peeping. I know I can run my RAW files through DxO for best results, but I'd also like to maximize my SOOC quality first before fixing my mistakes in PP.

Bearing in mind I'm still a relatively unskilled amateur, I've nailed down my potential problems to the following possibilities:

• I use BBF, perhaps my delay between focus and shutter click is too long.
• I'm not focusing on the right location (I think I focused on the subject's head).
• Shutter speed isn't high enough to compensate for my shaky handholding or the subject's movements.
• My 40-150R simply isn't sharp at 150mm, or is otherwise defective in some way.
• F5.6 shouldn't produce noticeable diffraction, but maybe it does?
• E-P7 single focus points are too big, and my focus target is too small.
• Default sharpening (0) on the E-P7 isn't good enough.

The below sample shots are all SOOC with no PP, shot at 150mm with MF (effectively S-AF due to BBF), noise filtering low (just trying it out). Any help would be appreciated!









Random cat silently judging my ineptitude:

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C-AF on the E-P7 uses CDAF. It feels slow and very prone to pumping, more often than not it completely misses focus especially on slow-moving or static targets.

To be quite honest, the lack of PDAF is a major reason I'm looking for an upgrade. Still waiting on the OM-3 prices to drop, luckily I now see grey market imports showing up.

JohnClif said:

It looks like your focus is off... the rocks and water are more in focus than the heron. I use a very tight focusing spot and ensure what I want is in focus, counting on the depth of field to catch the errors. I also use S-AF mode in such situations so I know where my focus was.

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My focus last week definitely felt off, I wasn't too comfortable with my BBF and shutter release delay then. The other problem was that even with at the smallest focus point, the birds' heads were even smaller and couldn't fill the focus point entirely.

JohnClif said:

Remember, that the magnification factor over full-frame is 2X with a MFT sensor, so the rule of thumb of shooting 1 over the focal length, e.g., shooting a minimum of 1/250 sec with a 200mm lens, means you should be shooting at a minimum of 1/500 second with a moving subject at 150mm. I'd up the ISO to 1200 to get a sharper photo, knowing that you're trading 'grain' for no movement and consequent sharpness.

I think you want the type of image that would be captured with a 40-150/2.8 but with your 40-150/4-5.6... and you're discovering why more capable lenses cost more (more glass, more high quality glass, tighter tolerances). The 40-150/4-5.6 is a great travel lens for landscapes and subjects at longer distances, and in bright light or when you have a support. For quick-moving wildlife like a hunting heron the 40-150/2.8 is far more capable.

With a smaller, 'darker' lens (smaller max aperture) you're going to have to make some trade-offs. More light, or higher ISO with grain. The expensive lenses give a different trade-off... more money and weight, easier to get better photographs.

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I think your skills are rapidly improving and I'm hoping you will have a sunny day soon because I expect that will help your confidence quite a bit!

drj3 said:

Kasuobes said:

Thanks for the advice so far, I weaned myself off BBF and back to half-press focus. Turns out the E-P7 is permanently stuck in focus priority mode (there's no release priority option. When I skip the half-press focusing and press all the way down for exposure, the E-P7 will still attempt to focus before taking the shot. This should mighty useful as I can first achieve rough focus with half-press, release and full press for the camera to fine-tune its focus and expose with very little delay.

Took some more shots today without BBF and at F5.6-F8, though my shutter speed is still a bit low due to the poor light. I shot in aperture priority and left ISO on auto to deal with the changing light, also turned off noise filtering (not noise reduction which is dark frame subtraction for long exposures!) to try and coax out a bit more detail.

Click to expand...

Well done. There is nothing wrong with your shutter speed. There is no indication of motion blur. My only comments would be to pull down the highlights in the first image a little and the feather detail of the bird will show and yes a longer focal length would help especially for the third image. The OM Systems 75-300 f4.8-6.7 or Panasonic 100-300 f4-5.6 mm would be the least expensive lenses to give you a longer focal length.

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I agree, I'm definitely hitting the limits of what I can capture with acceptable sharpness at 150mm.

It definitely feels frustrating at first as I felt I could do more with a zoom, but now I realize it's the exact same compromise I'm making when I only carry my 15mm and 42.5mm primes. There are some shots I have to pass up even with a zoom.


Little egret hunting for its breakfast.




150mm + 2x DTC. Definitely not good enough for prints, but good enough for my own memento.

drj3 said:

drj3 said:

I think the poor SOOC sharpness I'm seeing is a combination of limitations between my focal length being too short (the bird heads themselves are smaller than the smallest focus point on the E-P7), and the 40-150R being inherently soft at 150mm. Correct me if I'm wrong please!

Click to expand...

While the lens may not be as sharp as the 40-150 f2.8 or f4 lenses, it is sufficiently sharp to give sufficient detail for good images. Sometimes on DPR we overemphasize the importance of lens sharpness.

Click to expand...

Correct me if I'm wrong again, but wouldn't more focal length almost always be better than crops of sharp lenses? For example, wouldn't the lowly 75-300 at its max focal length show details better than the 40-150 F2.8 (without TC) cropped and upscaled to 300mm?

Bast Hotep said:

I think your skills are rapidly improving and I'm hoping you will have a sunny day soon because I expect that will help your confidence quite a bit!

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I do wish the morning weather would be less cloudy, but then again this is a fairly good exercise for myself on how to adapt to poor light.

Took some more shots of the heron yesterday at different focal lengths, shutter speed and ISO, just to see if there are any noticeable differences in sharpness. 150mm looks fairly decent to me now and I don't see any motion blur between 1/320s and 1/500s. Perhaps the unsharpness and loss of detail are more due the high ISO rather than the lens being inherently unsharp?


100mm 1/500s, F8, ISO 2500


100mm, 1/320s, F8, ISO 1600


150mm, 1/500s, F8, ISO 2500


150mm, 1/320s, F8, ISO 2000

SOOC jpegs are usually slightly soft. Much better results can be obtained using processed RAW files, however Jpegs can also be further processed.

I have taken one of your shots & applied Topaz Sharpen with a few other tweaks, such as cropping, increasing colour saturation & selectively brightening the lighter feathers

Kasuobes said:

drj3 said:

Kasuobes said:

Thanks for the advice so far, I weaned myself off BBF and back to half-press focus. Turns out the E-P7 is permanently stuck in focus priority mode (there's no release priority option. When I skip the half-press focusing and press all the way down for exposure, the E-P7 will still attempt to focus before taking the shot. This should mighty useful as I can first achieve rough focus with half-press, release and full press for the camera to fine-tune its focus and expose with very little delay.

Took some more shots today without BBF and at F5.6-F8, though my shutter speed is still a bit low due to the poor light. I shot in aperture priority and left ISO on auto to deal with the changing light, also turned off noise filtering (not noise reduction which is dark frame subtraction for long exposures!) to try and coax out a bit more detail.

Click to expand...

Well done. There is nothing wrong with your shutter speed. There is no indication of motion blur. My only comments would be to pull down the highlights in the first image a little and the feather detail of the bird will show and yes a longer focal length would help especially for the third image. The OM Systems 75-300 f4.8-6.7 or Panasonic 100-300 f4-5.6 mm would be the least expensive lenses to give you a longer focal length.

Click to expand...

I agree, I'm definitely hitting the limits of what I can capture with acceptable sharpness at 150mm.

It definitely feels frustrating at first as I felt I could do more with a zoom, but now I realize it's the exact same compromise I'm making when I only carry my 15mm and 42.5mm primes. There are some shots I have to pass up even with a zoom.

Kasuobes said:

Kasuobes said:

I think the poor SOOC sharpness I'm seeing is a combination of limitations between my focal length being too short (the bird heads themselves are smaller than the smallest focus point on the E-P7), and the 40-150R being inherently soft at 150mm. Correct me if I'm wrong please!

Click to expand...

While the lens may not be as sharp as the 40-150 f2.8 or f4 lenses, it is sufficiently sharp to give sufficient detail for good images. Sometimes on DPR we overemphasize the importance of lens sharpness.

Click to expand...

Correct me if I'm wrong again, but wouldn't more focal length almost always be better than crops of sharp lenses? For example, wouldn't the lowly 75-300 at its max focal length show details better than the 40-150 F2.8 (without TC) cropped and upscaled to 300mm?

Click to expand...

In this case probably not. 75-300 is soft @ 300 and needs a good amount of stopping down, while the 40-150/2.8 is sharpest @ 150 and need not be stopped down at all, at the most 2/3 stop. I'll take the cropped 150/3.2 shot at ISO 200 over a 300/8 shot at ISO 800.

Composition and focus acquisition of a small distant subject can be considered separately. Often harder to get accurate focus when it's not filling much of the frame, and the extra reach can help with that.

Rick

It's possible. I can see things are looking a lot better already!

I'm not at all familiar with that body you're using, but since it's fairly recent I would think that level of ISO wouldn't cause problems.

I do have a copy of that lens, but I haven't used it much and never on birds. Its reputation at max zoom is not great, so that's likely to be the "culprit". FWIW I never bought the fabled 300 f/4 because it's way too short for me as well (I mostly shoot small birds and use the 100-400). Personally in your situation I would use post-processing on RAW as it can do wonders for detail (as well as everything else it can do lol)!

It strikes me that the corroded metal on that pier offers nearly as much challenging detail as bird feathers. Perhaps you could test your ISO hypothesis by taking one shot of the corrosion at ISO 2000 and then another immediately after at ISO 200.

To fully disclose my bias: I believe ISO is a major factor in the softness you report. If things like catchlight in the bird’s eye are sharp, but feathers look fuzzy, it’s not the optical quality of the lens. Depth of field maybe, wind ruffling feathers maybe, but ruling those out I suspect most likely ISO 2000.

(It is I, the 75-300 defender. My apologies to those who have already seen what I am about to discuss!)

The 75-300 is capable of very good results in my opinion and experience, but it – being an unstabilized lens with rather narrow apertures – does have a smaller shooting envelope that requires special handling to compensate. Optically it can be very sharp, given a very stable platform. A used 75-300 (original generation) was my first birding MFT lens. I got it for $185 on Amazon Japan, in Acceptable condition. From the listing photos, I could see the front element was covered in fungus, but having repaired a Canon EF-S 55-250, I thought maybe the 75-300 would be as easy to disassemble. And it was: I cleaned it in ten minutes and never looked back. I trained with it for over a year before the ribbon cable failed due to my excitedly extending it out to maximum zoom, multiple times a day. Which I thought was a fair value to get shots like this (I suggest viewing full size to appreciate feather detail):


300mm, f/6.7, ISO 200, 1/500s, shot as JPEG, then mild crop and brighten on iPad


300mm, f/6.7, ISO 200, 1/400s, SOOC JPEG (view full size for nuanced feather detail)


300mm, f/6.7, ISO 200, 1/400s, SOOC JPEG. This was the trip where I figured out a stable platform made all the difference. Seeing the catchlight in the eye in a shot taken so far away was a minor revelation


300mm, f/6.7, ISO 200, 1/1600s, SOOC JPEG


300mm, f/6.7, ISO 200, 1/250s, SOOC JPEG


300mm, f/6.7, ISO 400, 1/50s. Don't be afraid to drag the shutter if you can keep everything stable

I almost always shot this lens wide open at 300mm, because I wanted to keep ISOs as close as possible to my EM-1 II and OM-1's base of 200. To do this, I learned to keep a very stable platform, almost tai-chi in practice with breathing and foot position, as I don't shoot with a tripod/monopod. The other trick is learned was to buy the very large hood designed for this lens, and then keep my left hand as close to the bottom edge of that hood, for extra stability. This took some load off the IBIS unit of my camera bodies. In this way I was able to get sharp results, provided I could squeeze enough light out of the situation.

Is the 75-300mm a 40-150mm f/2.8 with teleconverters? No. Is it a 200mm f/2.8 with a 1.4TC? Also no. But it's far lighter and more compact than either of those, and in good light and with very good technique, it can be very sharp. Like a few others in this forum, I have never felt the need to close down the aperture for sharpness, only depth of field. And there is one person (I've forgotten which one) who discovered that this lens is extremely sharp at 75mm. So, a good portrait lens in a pinch. After wearing out the 75-300, I was confident enough in my fieldcraft and handling skills to spend considerably more money on those other two lenses.

I sometimes miss the old Olympus lens. I was given an original Panasonic 100-300, which is a little brighter and has the advantage of OIS. But somehow I've never gelled with that lens, and have yet to get the same reliable results as with the lens I learned wildlife on, the 75-300 f/4.8-6.7 I.


Also pretty good for scale detail! 300mm, f/6.7, ISO 200, 1/1000s, SOOC JPEG

--
Enjoy your small world of photography

Keit ll said:

SOOC jpegs are usually slightly soft. Much better results can be obtained using processed RAW files, however Jpegs can also be further processed.

I have taken one of your shots & applied Topaz Sharpen with a few other tweaks, such as cropping, increasing colour saturation & selectively brightening the lighter feathers

Click to expand...

PP indeed work wonders, and I'm not terribly averse to retouching my shots. Still, I aim to get as close to perfection as I can SOOC for fast turnaround times, especially at events (unpaid of course) where I'm expected to share snapshots during the event, with no time for PP.


SOOC, I messed up a bit with my color profile with oversaturated colors.


Processed RAW, denoised and sharpened through Topaz. Colors look good enough so I didn't bother changing the saturation and tone curve.

Skeeterbytes said:

Kasuobes said:

drj3 said:

Kasuobes said:

Thanks for the advice so far, I weaned myself off BBF and back to half-press focus. Turns out the E-P7 is permanently stuck in focus priority mode (there's no release priority option. When I skip the half-press focusing and press all the way down for exposure, the E-P7 will still attempt to focus before taking the shot. This should mighty useful as I can first achieve rough focus with half-press, release and full press for the camera to fine-tune its focus and expose with very little delay.

Took some more shots today without BBF and at F5.6-F8, though my shutter speed is still a bit low due to the poor light. I shot in aperture priority and left ISO on auto to deal with the changing light, also turned off noise filtering (not noise reduction which is dark frame subtraction for long exposures!) to try and coax out a bit more detail.

Click to expand...

Well done. There is nothing wrong with your shutter speed. There is no indication of motion blur. My only comments would be to pull down the highlights in the first image a little and the feather detail of the bird will show and yes a longer focal length would help especially for the third image. The OM Systems 75-300 f4.8-6.7 or Panasonic 100-300 f4-5.6 mm would be the least expensive lenses to give you a longer focal length.

Click to expand...

I agree, I'm definitely hitting the limits of what I can capture with acceptable sharpness at 150mm.

It definitely feels frustrating at first as I felt I could do more with a zoom, but now I realize it's the exact same compromise I'm making when I only carry my 15mm and 42.5mm primes. There are some shots I have to pass up even with a zoom.

Skeeterbytes said:

Skeeterbytes said:

I think the poor SOOC sharpness I'm seeing is a combination of limitations between my focal length being too short (the bird heads themselves are smaller than the smallest focus point on the E-P7), and the 40-150R being inherently soft at 150mm. Correct me if I'm wrong please!

Click to expand...

While the lens may not be as sharp as the 40-150 f2.8 or f4 lenses, it is sufficiently sharp to give sufficient detail for good images. Sometimes on DPR we overemphasize the importance of lens sharpness.

Click to expand...

Correct me if I'm wrong again, but wouldn't more focal length almost always be better than crops of sharp lenses? For example, wouldn't the lowly 75-300 at its max focal length show details better than the 40-150 F2.8 (without TC) cropped and upscaled to 300mm?

Click to expand...

In this case probably not. 75-300 is soft @ 300 and needs a good amount of stopping down, while the 40-150/2.8 is sharpest @ 150 and need not be stopped down at all, at the most 2/3 stop. I'll take the cropped 150/3.2 shot at ISO 200 over a 300/8 shot at ISO 800.

Composition and focus acquisition of a small distant subject can be considered separately. Often harder to get accurate focus when it's not filling much of the frame, and the extra reach can help with that.

Rick

Click to expand...

I once read or heard somewhere that zoom lenses are not for shooting at greater distances, but rather for capturing more details at shorter distances. In other words, even with a zoom I should get as close as possible before using the extra reach.

For my bird shots in this thread, I don't think I could get any closer as I was already leaning over the railings on the pier. Hence I wonder whether I could extract more details with the longer reach of the 75-300, even if I don't shoot at the full 300mm reach.

UrbaneHobbit said:

(It is I, the 75-300 defender. My apologies to those who have already seen what I am about to discuss!)

The 75-300 is capable of very good results in my opinion and experience, but it – being an unstabilized lens with rather narrow apertures – does have a smaller shooting envelope that requires special handling to compensate. Optically it can be very sharp, given a very stable platform. A used 75-300 (original generation) was my first birding MFT lens. I got it for $185 on Amazon Japan, in Acceptable condition. From the listing photos, I could see the front element was covered in fungus, but having repaired a Canon EF-S 55-250, I thought maybe the 75-300 would be as easy to disassemble. And it was: I cleaned it in ten minutes and never looked back. I trained with it for over a year before the ribbon cable failed due to my excitedly extending it out to maximum zoom, multiple times a day. Which I thought was a fair value to get shots like this (I suggest viewing full size to appreciate feather detail):


300mm, f/6.7, ISO 200, 1/500s, shot as JPEG, then mild crop and brighten on iPad


300mm, f/6.7, ISO 200, 1/400s, SOOC JPEG (view full size for nuanced feather detail)


300mm, f/6.7, ISO 200, 1/400s, SOOC JPEG. This was the trip where I figured out a stable platform made all the difference. Seeing the catchlight in the eye in a shot taken so far away was a minor revelation


300mm, f/6.7, ISO 200, 1/1600s, SOOC JPEG


300mm, f/6.7, ISO 200, 1/250s, SOOC JPEG


300mm, f/6.7, ISO 400, 1/50s. Don't be afraid to drag the shutter if you can keep everything stable

I almost always shot this lens wide open at 300mm, because I wanted to keep ISOs as close as possible to my EM-1 II and OM-1's base of 200. To do this, I learned to keep a very stable platform, almost tai-chi in practice with breathing and foot position, as I don't shoot with a tripod/monopod. The other trick is learned was to buy the very large hood designed for this lens, and then keep my left hand as close to the bottom edge of that hood, for extra stability. This took some load off the IBIS unit of my camera bodies. In this way I was able to get sharp results, provided I could squeeze enough light out of the situation.

Is the 75-300mm a 40-150mm f/2.8 with teleconverters? No. Is it a 200mm f/2.8 with a 1.4TC? Also no. But it's far lighter and more compact than either of those, and in good light and with very good technique, it can be very sharp. Like a few others in this forum, I have never felt the need to close down the aperture for sharpness, only depth of field. And there is one person (I've forgotten which one) who discovered that this lens is extremely sharp at 75mm. So, a good portrait lens in a pinch. After wearing out the 75-300, I was confident enough in my fieldcraft and handling skills to spend considerably more money on those other two lenses.

I sometimes miss the old Olympus lens. I was given an original Panasonic 100-300, which is a little brighter and has the advantage of OIS. But somehow I've never gelled with that lens, and have yet to get the same reliable results as with the lens I learned wildlife on, the 75-300 f/4.8-6.7 I.


Also pretty good for scale detail! 300mm, f/6.7, ISO 200, 1/1000s, SOOC JPEG

Click to expand...

Very impressive shots! Your photos are pretty much the results I'm aiming for, great SOOC shots with minimal need for PP (I use Snapseed on my tablet/phone for cropping and very minor color and tone curve corrections).

Bast Hotep said:

It's possible. I can see things are looking a lot better already!

I'm not at all familiar with that body you're using, but since it's fairly recent I would think that level of ISO wouldn't cause problems.

Click to expand...

The E-P7, from what I understand, uses the same hardware as the E-M10.4 but in a rangefinder body, with customizable color profiles of the PEN-F. I'll definitely try shooting static objects this weekend for ISO and sharpness tests at different focal lengths and aperture sizes

Bast Hotep said:

I do have a copy of that lens, but I haven't used it much and never on birds. Its reputation at max zoom is not great, so that's likely to be the "culprit". FWIW I never bought the fabled 300 f/4 because it's way too short for me as well (I mostly shoot small birds and use the 100-400). Personally in your situation I would use post-processing on RAW as it can do wonders for detail (as well as everything else it can do lol)!

Click to expand...