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cpaulfell · Joined: 07 Dec 2011 Posts: 2430

Yesterday just before 6:30pm whilst my daughter and I were out driving though the Skagit Valley we happened upon a field with literally thousands of snow geese. Quite exciting I must say. Naturally tires squealed, rubber burned and brakes glowed red as we pulled over and fell out the car grabbing cameras and tripods on the way.

We hunkered down and dirty on the side of the field and started snapping away. Over the next 20 minutes, before they spooked and took flight, I took 236 photos. The air roared and you could feel the beating of thousands of wings in your chest. Never experienced anything like it.

Could not wait to get home and download. 8:40pm we arrived back home, download, download and then I nearly threw my computer against the wall. Every single frame was either out of focus or noisy as hell.

Below are a couple of shots so you can see what I mean and the EXIF data is available on each.

Any advice on where I went wrong?

I had a Cannon EF 75-300mm f/4.0-5.6 III) fitted with a Kenko Teleplus PRO 300 DGX 1.4x AF Teleconverter on the camera. The sun was about 35 degrees above horizon to the right with very light cloud cover.

cpaulfell · Joined: 07 Dec 2011 Posts: 2430

some more

jeffbanke · Posted: Mon Apr 09, 2012 1:58 pm

Let me ask you a question, Do they look like they are sharp to you?

G1 has horrendous green/purple fringing,
G0 is just too busy, not enough separation to focus in on the one goose.
G3 had some possibilities, but obviously is OOF, and could loose the dirt line at bottom of image
Mike Norton, might say that this is a case of "One too many trees" though.

cpaulfell · Joined: 07 Dec 2011 Posts: 2430

Jeff did you bother to read my post?

hhltdave5 · Posted: Mon Apr 09, 2012 2:31 pm

What shutter speed were you using? Too slow is going to cause some blur.

Is the lens an IS or VR? Many of these types of lenses must have the IS or VR turned off when on a tripod or they will give a soft image.

What focusing matrix were you using? Closest to camera? Spot or some other matrix?

Were you shooting in continuous mode where you were kicking off several frames a second? This in combination of how you are moving the camera on the tripod can cause focus problems.

I am not familiar with your camera but does it have a continuous focusing mode which will change the focus as the objects in the frame move? If you had it set to single servo this could also cause an OOF image because the object moved to a new location but you did not reset the focus.

Could be a lot of things and when we get the answers to these questions we may be able to narrow it down.

ajancso · Joined: 18 May 2009 Posts: 1891 Location: Right Behind You

The problem is that you started with a not too good lens and compounded the problem with a teleconverter.
I would say that a 70-200 lens plus converter would probably give you a better result than the 75-300 without a teleconverter.

jeffbanke · Posted: Mon Apr 09, 2012 2:49 pm

cpaulfell · Joined: 07 Dec 2011 Posts: 2430

The lens is not of the IS variety.
The camera was set to AI Servo (continuous focus on moving objects)
I had set the camera to program mode with ISO 100 selected. WB was in Auto and Scene Selection in Auto. In this mode the camera selects what it considers to be the best f stop and shutter speed.

g0 was take at 1/100 sec, f8.0 and I was not shooting continuously. Lens was set to auto focus

g3 was taken at 1/250 sec, f6.4 and I was shooting continuously. All flight shots was taken with continuous shooting. Lens was set to auto focus.

cpaulfell · Joined: 07 Dec 2011 Posts: 2430

jeffbanke · Posted: Mon Apr 09, 2012 2:55 pm

On the auto focus, did you have it set on "average" or "spot" ?
If the former that would make it difficult with so many birds to know where to focus, if the latter there would be one spot in the image that would be sharper than everything else.
It does not seem that there is anything particularly sharp pointing to the latter. Alternatively as we said before it could just be the lens extender combination is particularly poor. As I pointed out before (in my comments before I read your entire post) the fringing is horrendous which points to lens quality or lack thereof, so yes you can blame the equipment :-).

cpaulfell · Joined: 07 Dec 2011 Posts: 2430

Thanks Jeff :)

As for set on "average" or "spot" - to be Honest I have no idea. That is something I am going to have to find out and look into. Currently I am in Vancouver, Canuck land, so I will only be able to check it out on Wednesday night when I get back home.

jeffbanke · Posted: Mon Apr 09, 2012 3:16 pm

robhainer · Joined: 03 May 2010 Posts: 2746 Location: Dallas, GA, USA

I would say that first, 1/250 is way too slow for birds in flight. Probably need 1/1000 at the very least, 1/1600 to be sure. Unless you're an expert panner, which would not have worked with that many birds because they're moving at different speeds.

Also, have you ever gotten sharp images with that lens+teleconverter? Seems unlikely.

cpaulfell · Joined: 07 Dec 2011 Posts: 2430

cpaulfell · Joined: 07 Dec 2011 Posts: 2430