Canada Goose

Tokina-made Soligor 400mm f/6.3 on a Canon EOS 50D.
Lens made in 1971.

Lotsa geese out this evening. They were ALL actively preening themselves,
so no good poses.

Trying to refine my abilities in manual focusing/exposure, as well as processing.
Sharpening acceptably often escapes me.
This one looks fairly good to me.

It's a good start and a good step to start with some practice birds...the prevalence of these things any more is certainly nice.

What are you editing in, Craig? This one looks ok, but does appear that you're sharpening noise along with the rest of the image; also, Sharpening itself looks a little aggressive.

If you're using Lightroom, it's easier to apply masking that limits the sharpening effect to the edges of your subject and leaves the 'empty' space and noise more or less alone. I'm commenting based on the somewhat "crunchy" texture in the grass and in the oof area behind the bird.

Given that lens, I'd probably also stop it down to f/8 instead of shooting 'wide open' by default. The fraction of a stop in light gathering should be less impact than getting a little more clarity in the initial capture and should be easy to make up for w/ ISO or shutter speed on the 50d. Remember, you only *need* about 1/500 if you're hand-holding and not shooting a really moving subject.

Agree with the above. Looking good.

Try more noise reduction before sharpening. Once you sharpen noise, you never get rid of it. Also selective sharpening of the subject only. Some software allows you to reuse the mask in reverse, so select the subject to sharpen, and then use the mask in reverse to further reduce noise in the background.

Yeah, it's easy to forget to stop down.
Focus is much more difficult to attain
at smaller apertures, so the method is to
focus at maximum. I'll have to train myself
to meter closed down, then open up for focus
and stop down again.
A moving target tends to make one forget, however.

Feedback welcome and appreciated, guys.
Good tips to go on.


I use PhotoShop CS6. Never tried Lightroom.
Unsharp mask is about all I know for sharpening;
I'll tweak the output from time to time, seeking
the elusive 'magic' combination.
It still eludes me.

I see what you're driving at on the noise issue,
now that it's been mentioned. I've yet to attempt
any actual noise reduction processing.

The idea of masking is indeed interesting.

I suppose my own troubles in figuring some of these
things out has been a lack of tutorials which speak
to everyman instead the already-accomplished users.
I tend also to be somewhat impatient, in that if what
I'd like to learn of can't be found within an hour
in verbiage that I'm able to understand, I step away
from or abandon the initial interest.
Google and YouTube haven't yet been my best of friends
for such learning endeavors.