-= 7D2 owners unite! Discuss and post photos!

Haha! I'm pretty sure I am not an expert at anything photographic related! By all means, come to Iowa but not for me to help with fine tuning a lens!
I asked because that close up shot is razor sharp! I'm jealous, my Big Tammy isn't that sharp.

I just reading Gabe's treatise on 600mm focal length and how heat waves can affect one image and not an image taken just seconds later, waves come and go I suppose. Well since my Tam is super sharp some new owner might appreciate it, I took the plunge on the 100-400ii today--might keep the tam though, won't decide that just yet....again via Allen's Cameras in Levittown...they were there for me when the big NYC boys were (and currently are backordererd). Allen has (had) four in stock. I asked for a sharp one
Ok, sorry to get off topic, now back to the 7D2......

MedicineMan4040 wrote in post #17386355
I took the plunge on the 100-400ii today-....

Robert, you old dog you, couldn't resist eh ..

Upcoming post to whet your whistle while you wait for the new lens to arrive ... hahahaha

Cheers
Gus

All with the 100-400II

The Weebill, Australia's smallest bird.

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/qxF4​QE

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/qxF4​Yq

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/qQeo​5a

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/qQeo​o6

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/qQeo​vR

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/qxMj​Dp

Wonderful captures all but the Weebill looks perfect.
I know you told me 'grass is greener.....' but I often feel like I'm living in a desert when it comes to beautiful birdlife like you have.
Gus did you see the thread on the loose tripod foot on the 100-400ii? thoughts?

MedicineMan4040 wrote in post #17386428
Wonderful captures all but the Weebill looks perfect.
I know you told me 'grass is greener.....' but I often feel like I'm living in a desert when it comes to beautiful birdlife like you have.
Gus did you see the thread on the loose tripod foot on the 100-400ii? thoughts?

Thanks Robert, I was chuffed with the Weebill, especially as they are so tiny and the photo's are heavily cropped.

Haven't seen the thread on the tripod foot, will look for it now and see what is afoot (pun intended hahaha) and report back.

Cheers
Gus

MedicineMan4040 wrote in post #17386428
Gus did you see the thread on the loose tripod foot on the 100-400ii? thoughts?

Edit; Found the thread and posted the below over there too:

No problems with mine, I have had the foot off once to have a look at the mechanism etc and then put it back, and since then I have had the lens mounted on a tilt head on my mono-pod and have slung the monopod with camera/lens still attached over my shoulder as I move around quite a few times.
Just checked the mount on the lens and found no issues at all, I guess if you don't tighten it up enough it could feel loose, but as i said, no issues with mine.

Cheers
Gus

Great captures Gus. Re the cropping, I've found this lens seems to allow a surprising amount - it seems to resolve even more detail than my 70-200 II!

TerminalCity wrote in post #17386488
Great captures Gus. Re the cropping, I've found this lens seems to allow a surprising amount - it seems to resolve even more detail than my 70-200 II!

Thanks Stephen, and yeah, I gotta admit that my 70-200 II is sorely under used these days, the 100-400 II just seems to do such a great job.

Cheers
Gus

Wonderful shots MM. Well done.

Thanks Will

Congrats on the new lens Robert!

Darn you Gus, now I want one too!
From this forum and FM, it sure looks like the 7dII and the 100-400II were made to be paired together.

JVthePT wrote in post #17386350
Haha! I'm pretty sure I am not an expert at anything photographic related! By all means, come to Iowa but not for me to help with fine tuning a lens!
I asked because that close up shot is razor sharp! I'm jealous, my Big Tammy isn't that sharp.

A good part of the reason that it is "razor sharp" is that it is aliased because of the way that it was processed, which seems to be with some sort of nearest neighbor downsizing, which gives sharp-but-distorted results. With web images being small in both megapixels and screen area, it is hard to include a lot of detail, so the temptation is always there to make them look more detailed than the small image can portray by using nearest neighbor. Personally, I prefer to properly downsample and then sharpen a tad with USM at 0.3px. There is no way to use nearest neighbor and control the distortion, other than blurring the image before downsizing it.

So, one man's "razor sharp" is another man's distortion.

Boy, I didn't really understand all that, but I do know when I see a sharp photo. That beak and the hairlike feathers visible as a silhouette on the left side of the image are pretty dang sharp!
I would like to learn more about sharpening, I always feel like I get nothing or a little heavy handed. If you have links to info, I would, and I'm sure others would appreciate it.

JVthePT wrote in post #17386701
Boy, I didn't really understand all that, but I do know when I see a sharp photo. That beak and the hairlike feathers visible as a silhouette on the left side of the image are pretty dang sharp!

You can only know that the original capture was very sharp if you were looking at a 100% crop. Any image that small, which appears sharp, could have come from a very soft image. Prove it to yourself - upsample it to 20MP, then note how soft it is. Then downsize to the original size again, and voila, it is sharp again! Sorry, but I can't help but react when people get excited about the sharpness or detail of small images, without them being known to be 100% crops. The original of the hawk portrait could have been quite soft, and still have been this sharp-looking, presented at this size; not that there's anything wrong with that if the image is intended to be displayed small without a lot of cropping.

At small sizes, sharpness is almost completely due to processing, unless the image was way out of focus to begin with.

My knowledge is based on figuring things out for myself with experiments, so I don't have any such references to give. One of the first things that I noticed when doing digital photography was that if I had a soft image, and kept hitting the button that zooms out, the resulting image got smaller and sharper, and if you were able to select the downsizing method, nearest neighbor made the images sharpest, but the most distorted, and noisiest if the image was somewhat noisy to begin with. The basic idea of nearest neighbor downsizing is that entire rows and columns of pixels are completely stripped out of the image, and many people see the result of discarded detail as an increase in detail, ironically.