Why I (gasp) pixel peep

Chaucey,

Your two shots were a good example of a shot that was quite soft and one that was markedly sharper.

I'm not sure why you've encountered some implied criticism as if you are being overly picky regarding these two shots. It should be a no-brainer that if you were comparing the two, you would reject the soft one.

Why was one softer than the other? It's hard to say. How do you ensure acceptible sharpness? Well, in a static scene such as what you displayed, you did the right thing -- take multiple exposures, re-activating the AF so that a possible miss could be corrected. When you're dealing with dynamic subjects, such as wildlife or cars or airplanes or people on the move, you generaly use AI Servo and one of your continuous modes, then compare at your desktop.

But, there is a difference between reasonably sharp and noticeably soft. There would have to be a compelling reason to choose a soft pic over a sharper pic. Sure, there is some creative leeway, especially if a somewhat soft pic has some great compositional elements that you couldn't get sharper. And, some pics that are somewhat soft when you view them at 100% come out looking great at Web size or printed at, say, 8x10. That's fine, but that doesn't imply that they're just as acceptable IQ-wise as the sharper pic. It just means that they can be used in a limited way and are good in ways other than the sharpness factor. The limitations are obvious -- if you want to make a larger print or print a close crop of the softer pic, well, not so good.

There's nothing wrong with looking closely at your images and aspiring to get the best IQ that you can, as long as you're actually getting out, taking pics, and learning as you go!

I've been having a time over the past couple of weeks -- I've been going to a local airfield and practicing shooting small planes as they take off and land. It's easy to get shots at a high shutter speed, but the "effective" approach is to pan along with the plane and shoot at a low shutter speed so that motion blur shows up in the foreground/background but the actual plane is in focus. Now, just imagine how the "keeper/failure rate" comes out when you're learning that skill, hand-holding a hefty telephoto lens?

tonylong wrote in post #5326046
I've been having a time over the past couple of weeks -- I've been going to a local airfield and practicing shooting small planes as they take off and land. It's easy to get shots at a high shutter speed, but the "effective" approach is to pan along with the plane and shoot at a low shutter speed so that motion blur shows up in the foreground/background but the actual plane is in focus. Now, just imagine how the "keeper/failure rate" comes out when you're learning that skill, hand-holding a hefty telephoto lens?

Absolutely. If every blurred panning aviation photo I'd had over the last few years made me want to quit... Well... I'd certainly have given up by now!

As has been said before, unless you can get the perfect Human being who never makes mistakes and the perfect piece of equipment that never goes wrong and can read the photographer's mind, you'll always get some photos that arn't perfect. As neither of those things are ever going to happen, imperfect images will always exist. I've been out shooting before and had to take 10-15 frames of things like birds in the air before I've actually had what I want. If my technique were better, maybe I wouldn't have had to take so many shots to get one good image, but sometimes ending up with 10 imperfect photos is simply a part of getting the one you really want.

As long as you do actually end up with the photo you want, you haven't failed.

Paul

This thread started with an erroneous assumption of "tripod shake" on my part, then onto AF problems, for whatever reasons.

We are now at the point that most of you are trying to beat me upside the head in your best attempts to turn me into a photographer.
And I gotta say that I'm lovin every minute of it.
By way of this discussion you are forcing me to justify my educational process and in rebutt, pointing out the fact that my way may not be so legitiment after all.

The problem that we must overcome however is my total lack of creativity and although I welcome your input,
I believe that my continued research and practice is the only thing that will help in that area.

Thank you all for your input and keep those cards and letters coming.

chauncey wrote in post #5326742
The problem that we must overcome however is my total lack of creativity and although I welcome your input,
I believe that my continued research and practice is the only thing that will help in that area.

Keep practicing and practicing and practicing. When you think you've done enough, practice some more.

You'll get there, don't give up!

chauncey wrote in post #5326742
We are now at the point that most of you are trying to beat me upside the head in your best attempts to turn me into a photographer.
And I gotta say that I'm lovin every minute of it.
By way of this discussion you are forcing me to justify my educational process and in rebutt, pointing out the fact that my way may not be so legitiment after all.

People are giving you their opinions, that's all. No-one's 'forcing' you to do anything. Some responses may be a little harsh, but welcome to a world populated by artistic people who very often don't think before speaking their mind, (I've worked in music for 14 years, that's something I understand very well!)

It's up to you to take note/ignore as you see fit. If you absolutely believe your way of working is best for you, it isn't for anyone else to say you're wrong.

Paul

AndreaBFS wrote in post #5324517
What I find utterly amusing is how many people admonish others for caring whether their photos are "tack sharp" and a lot of the time, they are the same ones who notice that a photo is "a little soft" before they notice anything else about it. Can't have it both ways, ya know!

Sure ya' can.

When someone "pixel peeps", they're generally looking at a 100% crop of the original photo. Personally, I've never understood that, as I'm not printing out 100% crops, I'm printing out the original photo. 99 times out of a 100, I'd say that the original photos looks just fine.

A "soft" photo is usually pretty evident without pixel peeping...