Union Pacific Power, New to Forum, looking for opinions.

Where in Iowa were you for these?

Just west of Ames. About halfway to Boone.

I like the first one - it looks like they're closing in on you (though you could straighten it out just a bit).

I like the compostion of both shots. They seem a little dark for me though. Nice shots.

Kaine

Cool, I like them.

Jon.

These look like they have the potential to be nice shots except they don't seem to be sharp? Are you sharpening after resizing?

I concur with the others - nice shots, just need a bit more "snap".

Could be the dreaded "resize for web" function, or he's got them uploaded on the web at a larger size, and they have been auto-reduced to the 800 pixel max by PBase or another hosting service. Also could be that since it was getting a bit dark, shutter speed was very low.

And you were planted right in front of these babies for the shot! You are braver than I am.

Great captures. Loved the first one.

SuzyView

I thank-you for the comments so far, as far as sharpening or getting more snap how does one do that? Shutter was 1/100, f 9.0, iso 100, and as I said the sun was setting and I did not use a tripod. If I understand sharpening, it is not a tool that will correct an out of focus shot? Should I not depend on auto focus? With the settings on the camera I would'nt think I need a tripod.

1/100 is borderline, depending on focal length used and whether you used IS or not. If you bump up the ISO to 200 or 400, you can get significantly faster shutter speeds, which will eliminate any camera shake issues.

There's also the chance that you used the "save for web" feature of your processing software. It's better if you just resize and save at a higher quality level rather than using the automated feature, which usually saves as a lower-quality JPG.

Another thing which has caught me a couple of times is that I like to save my images larger than the 800 pixel width or height limit that is used by this site. THe problem is that some hosting sites (I use PBase.com) will automatically reduce the size of your image to 800 pixels wide or tall unless you specify the full image. When they do this, sometimes, the image sometimes goes rather soft.

Sleepe, what post-processing software do you have? Most people seem to have PhotoShop, in some version. I happen to use Picture Window Pro - there are others. Most will have a sharpening function, such as unsharp masking. After setting a couple of parameters, this will be automatically applied to the image. And yes, it can sharpen even a slightly out of focus image. You can also brighten and/or change the color staturation of the image in several, increasingly sophisticated ways. Applying these techniques could increase the "snap" of the image.