Canon 7d M2 BIF Not sharp! HELP

Today at 12:44pm
HELP! What am I doing wrong? I take mostly bird photos and have had decent luck with a Canon 50D with a 400mm 5.6 L lens. I just got a Canon 7d Mark 2 and can't get the kind of photo this combination and my $2500 plus investment should give me. BIF photos are what I like to shoot, but the new set up is not getting good results. I have watched tons of tuturials on settings, I have a pro series Lexar 106MB/s 32gb card. This is the best shot I have come up with. The lighting was perfect about 8:30 am, the bird was not flying too fast, yet the image is soft and has noise when blown up. (250 iso - 1/1600 f/5.6) Unedited image.Thanks a bunch!

Maybe I'm missing something, but it looks nicely sharp to me.

What about this one? On my camera screen the image POPS.......on my computer kinda blah!!!!!!!!

flymandan wrote in post #17931877
On my camera screen the image POPS.......on my computer kinda blah!!!!!!!!

The image on your camera is processed JPG. What you see on your computer is an unprocessed RAW file.

These are underexposed by at least a stop and a half. This causes the noise to look worse. Are you shooting RAW? Are you aware of the ETTR principle?

And if you shoot in raw, what software do you use to display the images on the screen?

Is this a put on?

these are excellent sharp images.

You did a great job getting these so sharp in flight. all that is needed now is a decent processing workflow. work on exposure, in camera. For these, you will want to do some sharpening after noise reduction in post.

What you see on your computer screen is also a processed jpeg. It just isnt as processed as the in camera jpeg unless you are using DPP.

CyberDyneSystems wrote in post #17932380
Is this a put on?

these are excellent sharp images.

You did a great job getting these so sharp in flight. all that is needed now is a decent processing workflow. work on exposure, in camera. For these, you will want to do some sharpening after noise reduction in post.

I'm with Jake; other than the second one being underexposed, they both look decently sharp to me.

Can you post a crop...its hard to judge sharpness at this size...they look to be ok, and in focus though

TeamSpeed wrote in post #17932381
What you see on your computer screen is also a processed jpeg. It just isnt as processed as the in camera jpeg unless you are using DPP.

That was the reason for my question about the viewer/editor on the OP's computer.

They seem sharp to me. I don't think you're doing anything wrong.

Not sure if this applies to the L lenses but I've heard the very ends of the lenses reach isn't the sharpest so back it off a tad. Drop the ISO if you can, and usually the aperature is at it's sharpest 3 stops above the lowest setting.

That might improve the sharpness but I think you've got it as good as you can get it at the settings you have.

Try again, ..... sorry i am kidding.

Yes, i came here to see and thought i will see not sharp or out of focus, but as all said those are very good sharp images, if they are RAW then you can process them and add sharpness and it will pop more, you don't have problems there.