A few from the weekend

Post the exif data as well. Are there shots from your other lenses that your happy with? If you've always questioned the sharpness of your setup, I think you have to trust your gut. Dropping $1k or more on a setup where your questioning the quality should not be the case. Otherwise, film would not be a dying business.

I am posting a 100% crop from the camera now. I have no idea what I am doing but yes these all were sharpened in pp. All shot in Jpeg.

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That 70-200 f4/20D combo should be giving you some killer sharp shots.

100% crop...straight from camera into PS elements the went to 100 % then cropped a section and saved for web...

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more 100% crop..

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Anything above ISO 800 and you're going to start seeing noise. At 1600, that's to be expected. There should be a piece of Canon software that came with your camera that shows you where your AF point is. The 2 posted doesn't tell me much because the Black Capped shot, looked like the bird house was in focus. You should be getting pretty clean shots at ISO 400.

Try shooting some in raw mode. jpg mode tends to blow out highlights and make shadows blacker than should be.

When you crop do you crop from say the image that opens up in PS or do you magnify it to crop ? I seem to get a better clear picture if I crop from the image in say 12 % or 25 %. Sorry but totally confused here... driving me nuts trying to figure this all out.

These shots all look quite normal to me. I don't think anyone claims that a 20D shoots noise-free at 400 even. You might use the Despeckle filter to remedy some of that, but it's no worse than expected, IMO.

Gonna give raw a whirl in a few and see how that goes. Thanks all for the help and recommendations. I really appreciate it alot.

your right the 400 should be a lot better i would say drop your iso to 100 .
here the crop is unprocessed the other has been processed although it may take a little more sharpning,400d - 400F5.6L 1/500sec f5.6 iso 100 resting on car roof centre point only.
im not a fan of iso's above 200 - unless your spot on in your exsposure and very good at PP work -Then it can shine -alass im not that good.
Rob.

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Of course 400 is going to give a bit of noise, but that doesn't mean there won't be detail in the shots . That robin shot is very soft. Look at GyRobs shot or my shot - plenty of detail in the feathers.

How far away from the bird was you Rob and William ? That may be my problem ..not close enough and having to crop alot .

sc_radar : there is a setting on the EOS20D for noise reduction, and I shoot ISO 400 and do not get that kind of noise what I think is happening is your over cropping the trying to enlarge from there, and your getting a lot of noise: I did a daylite moon shot when I was finish you could count the pixels hte heck with the Noise::VBG}

Umm thats really low quality... my 75-300 gives better 100% crops than that???