Baby owls - DOF question

dasmith232 wrote in post #19074054
Are you shooting in one of the semi-automatic modes, like Av? If so, then as you stop down the aperture (to f/8, f/11 and smaller) is your shutter speed slowing down and that's the real reason for blurred pictures?

You described that you were getting higher ISO speeds, but I wasn't sure if you were manually selecting higher ISO speeds or if the camera is doing that automatically (along with shutter).

I was shooting in manual, with auto ISO

Tom Reichner wrote in post #19074068
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Personally, in a situation like you had with those owls, I would stop all the way down to f16, keep the ISO at 1600, and then use a much slower shutter speed of 1/60th of a second.

Better yet, I would actually have probably lowered the ISO to 800 and cranked the shutter speed down even slower, like 1/30th of a second. . So many photographers seem to think that they need shutter speeds so much faster than they really do. . I'm not sure why so many people feel a need to "keep the shutter speed up" when they are photographing stationary subjects.

The 100-400 v2 that you have has such good IS that you should be able to hand hold at 340mm and get tack sharp shots at 1/25th or 1/30th, no problem.

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That is a excellent point. I should have tried that, looking back at it.

A tripod is a good option if camera shake is an issue at low shutter speeds. I rarely shoot iso over 400, I guess I have never had a camera or software that deals with noise well. I would look for options to increase your height, a ladder, or maybe even the roof. Getting on eye level will also get you better light where you need it.

Another option is shoot each individual and patch together with a panorama stitch software, or as a composition.
This photo I used 4 patches from to remove a leaf on lower right side. The wind blew the leaf into the frame, but I had other photos from same series that did not have the leaf.
I just made a composition and called it Frankenstein. This is the cropped version and didn't upload here too well, I will try to find the original and uncropped, but you get the idea. I just used DPP no fancy software required. I left everything the same size and cropped the pieces I patched with, some blending was needed along the seams but the printed version actually came out pretty good.

Photo from rgfrison's gallery.
Image hosted by forum (1011206)

duckster wrote in post #19072784
Thanks for the insights. Something like focus stacking makes sense but probably way outside my skill set in regards to PP

I'm jealous of your Owls in the backyard.
Focus stacking is the answer.
It's actually quite easy.

As the Owls are there, take a number of shots at different focus points. You now have what you need to create some great shots once you learn to focus stack, whenever that is.
Here's a stack I posted in another thread recently.
It's great as an example as it's far from perfect. You can see where the full automatic Photoshop stack did a great job and where it failed.

First, the 2 photos, focused on each Owl. I used f8. F16 would not have achieved focus on both owls. F8 was more to get enough DOF for each Owl.
The owl at bottom, f8 was not enough. The owl at top, f5.6 would have been enough.

Second, the 'full auto' Photoshop stack.
It did the actual Owls perfectly.

It's also obvious where it failed:
The branch the lower Owl on, at the lower left of the frame it used the out of focus section from the wrong photo. That's fairly easy to fix.
The lower Owl is holding the remains of a Possum. Photoshop got the tail of the possum correct, but again used the out of focus section of the Possums leg from the wrong photo.
Again, easy to fix.
The owl at the top: The branch it is on, goes out of focus towards the left where it intersect with another branch. Again, Photoshop chose the wrong photo to use in the stack.
Again easily fixed.

So even with these obvious mistakes, It's much better than the best 'non stack' option, which would be to focus between the Owls, neither would be in focus, but not too far out. Then sharpen them as much as you could before over sharpening ruins the photo.
I have 2 Owls in good focus, with some out of focus features in the final result, which can be fixed.

If you look around the stack, you will see other areas where the stack failed. What you see though when you first look at the result, is 2 subjects in focus.

The important thing is to get the captures you need so you can stack when you have the time, find the software or tutorial that you find easy to follow etc.
When I learned the Photoshop method, I just googled and the 2nd tutorial I found I liked, followed and have saved the instructions. If I do a stack every few months or so, I usually remember the steps. If not just find my tutorial and remind myself.

It seems I need to work on some new PP skills. Unfortunately, I have not seen the young owls in a couple of days

Obviously it depends on what software is used.
Here are the instructions when using Photoshop.


Go to File > Scripts > Load files into Stack...

Select the photos you just imported, then before creating the stack, check the 'Attempt to automatically align source images' checkbox.

After Photoshop creates the image with all the layers, use Shift to select all the layers in the Layers palette.

Go to Edit > Auto-Blend Layers...
Make sure the 'Stack' option is selected, and click OK.

So for the result I got, I think 'quite easy' is an understatement.