Birds - taken with the Canon 75 -300mm III nasty

[ozthunder]

First test for the 75-300mm which I picked up as a package with the 350D. Had I read the reviews I probably would not have brought the lens, even though it virtually cost me nothing.

The results were as indicated in previous posts very soft. CA was very evident on some photos. Below are some pictures that were worth keeping. Note that these are a long way off ' out of camera '. They have alll been cropped, shadows lightened ( dark day ) and sharpened.

Bird enthusiasts will be dissapointed as these are probably ( excepting seagull ) the most common birds in my area.

Eurasian Coot

http://ozthunder.com/temp/coot_t.jpg


Dusky Moorhen

http://ozthunder.com/temp/coot7_t.jpg

Pacific Black Duck

http://ozthunder.com/temp/duck3_t.jpg


Galah - Never used to see these on the coast ( Wollongong ) until a dreadful drought about 30 years ago - they have since established large colonies on the coast. Clearing for forest to parks, urban area has favoured their grass seed diet.

http://ozthunder.com/temp/galah1_t.jpg


Black Swan - taken at full 300mm - shows softness of lens, this one was passable, others showed bad CA between black edge of swan and water

http://ozthunder.com/temp/swans2_t.jpg


Michael
ozthunder.com

[crazyea]

not as bad as indicated for a reletivaley cheap lense.....and I dont have a couple of those birds where I live so for me it's nice to see them...

[Gary Fairhead]

Well they may be the most common birds in your area but this Forum has an International membership. So I for one am looking at birds that I am not familiar with. I really like the Pcific Black Duck for the water, reflection, exposure and sharpness, closely followed by the Moorhen and Coot. Nice!

[dancad]

That Pacific Black Duck sure has remarable markings. Since you say these are cropped, I would probably recrop them adding more room around the birds (especially the Coot and the Moorhen). I too like seeing these "exotic" birds.

[KaplanMultimedia]

The first few shots look nice and sharp. I have used this lens and found you can get very good results by not going all the way out to 300mm. Just back it off a little and stop it down at least 1/2 f/stop from the maximum aperture of f/5.6 and you should get excellent results.

[sparker1]

These are nice. I think the lens gets a bad rap, as I had one (IS) and it did pretty well. Still, I sold it and bought the 100-400 because of the super images I see posted. So far, mine aren't that good.

[Stephen Stephen]

Michael I think that your first four shots are fine. I particularly like the exposure on the coot and moorhen shots. Are you shooting in RAW or JPG? Raw format gives you much more flexibility in your basic exposure adjustment and white balance (eg. Cloudy or shade options). Anyway keep shooting you're certainly getting some keepers.