Must... not... pixel peep...

I'm always telling people that pixel-peeping is the road to madness and empty pockets. And then I went and violated my own rule. I'm now contemplating spending a lot of money to get the inner elements of my lenses cleaned because there's a bit of fungal growth on them. Am I being pound-foolish?

This shot was taken on a 7Dii with an image stabilized 80-200mm at f/2.8. It was cranked out to 200mm. It was windy and the camera was hand held. So I set the shutter speed to 1/4000, which I admit might have been overkill. Just an experimental shot really. It was the only one that was reasonably in focus because the subject was swaying in three dimensions.

How does it look without the pixel-peeping? Am I being overly critical?

Heya,

Even at this resolution, it seems something is off. But I want to say it's more likely due to subject moving out of focus as the shutter was tripped. Servo just isn't that fast, especially at this distance relative to subject movement.

Do the experiment again with something NOT moving. Get the AF and stuff out of the equation before you start spending money thinking fungus is doing this.

If anything, fungus would cause loss of contrast. Not sharpness loss.

Very best,

it's not in focus, otherwise it would be a nice photo.

Seems to me the left side of the subject (from camera perspective) is closest to the camera and the right is farthest. Hence, the middle is is in focus.

As a pixel peeper you should know that all that matters is your output size. So what do you want out of it?