Are my eyes sharp enough?

I am a beginner, around 6 months, and I am worried my eyes are not as sharp as they could be. Any critiques are welcome, although I was only worried about the eyes and not so much composition and lighting when I took this photo. I used back button focusing as I've read it's preferable to maximize sharpness. Thanks in advance.

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …/94663595@N03/8​638103589/

Way over-processed and sharpened, IMO. They look fake.

Just looked at the large size on flickr. Looks fine to me

Yep, viewed in full size they look quite normal.

Perfect!!

Sharpness is great, the photo looks a tad HDRish to me though.

Looks great on flickr

Agreed! I think the sharpness is perfect. What gear are you using? I'd say it's performing perfectly.

The sharpness is rather impressive, but the eyes look sort of.. plasticky? I dont know, but something just doesnt seem natural to me.If that was the intention though, you sure did a hell of a job

Thanks to all for taking the time to offer critiques! I definitely don't want it to look HDRish or oversharpened, so I will be watchful for that.

bberg, I'm using a T1i and this was with my nifty fifty.

romanneke wrote in post #15815423
The sharpness is rather impressive, but the eyes look sort of.. plasticky? I dont know, but something just doesnt seem natural to me.If that was the intention though, you sure did a hell of a job

Thanks for the critique! I appreciate the honesty to be received in this forum. I definitely wasn't trying to go for a fake look. I have been frustrated with my eye sharpness, or lack thereof, so I may have overcompensated in PP. It seems that I can obtain the correct sharpness, though, so I can probably scale back the steps in PP I used for this.

kacebelle wrote in post #15815447
..., so I can probably scale back the steps in PP I used for this.

Keep in mind that there's no "rule" that everything in the image has to be sharpened the same amount? And besides keeping the noise down, you'll also get a smaller file size.
A few words on SHARPENING:

PhotosGuy wrote in post #15815471
Keep in mind that there's no "rule" that everything in the image has to be sharpened the same amount? And besides keeping the noise down, you'll also get a smaller file size.
A few words on SHARPENING:

Thanks for the link; that has some great info! I don't remember doing anything but a slight sharpening of the other parts of the photo other than the eyes, but I'll double check it.

I like it. The lighting looks good to me and the image is sharp. It would appear to be very close to over processed without crossing the line. I would not worry much about the sharpness aspect as it's easy to get consumed by sharpness. It's a good and necessary thing but as Frank said, there is no hard/fast rule that everything in the image has to be of equal sharpness. Quite the contrary would be more the norm.

And my general rule would be to do as little processing on an image as possible, having gotten it as near perfect as possible in the camera.

Titus213 wrote in post #15818665
I like it. The lighting looks good to me and the image is sharp. It would appear to be very close to over processed without crossing the line. I would not worry much about the sharpness aspect as it's easy to get consumed by sharpness. It's a good and necessary thing but as Frank said, there is no hard/fast rule that everything in the image has to be of equal sharpness. Quite the contrary would be more the norm.

And my general rule would be to do as little processing on an image as possible, having gotten it as near perfect as possible in the camera.

Thank you for the critique. I think I am borderline obsessed with the sharpness, so I will keep this in mind during PP going forward.