Goldfinch (C&C appreciated)

Took this goldfinch at the feeder in my backyard.

It is soft, wonder why...I have this lens too, but haven't used it yet! Keep shooting, and post some more!

I just made a AF-Micro Adjustment to the lens of -8 steps. I used the concentric circle test on my 23" LCD. It was moving from "optimum" focus so I am hopeful. I should be able to get out this afternoon to try to duplicate this shot.

Softness could be due to the crop, is this a crop?

Consider some less severe framing too, perhaps give the bird a tad more room on the left.

It is a crop.

I would have opened up the left side but all that is there is the feeder.

I really wasn't going after composition on this one.

I see photos that others have posted that just POP sharpness and so far I have yet to achieve that. I want to solve that issue then move on to other aspects of the process.

The first image has had sharpening applied in PS.

Here are two 100% crop samples taken today with my AF MicroAdjustment and a 1/1000 shutter speed. No processing of any kind.

Something not right here with these....better take something else and see how it does. May have a problem with the lens.

I have similar problem of softness on many of mine and it is not the lens. I wear bifocals and I have adjusted the biopters on my cameras to shoot without glasses. When I have time I take several pics using tiny focus changes trying to find out where the problen lies. Most of my bird shooting is with the canon 100-400L and I have many tack sharp pics but at least as many that are soft. It's me.

These were all taken with auto focus on.

I will set up some still life subjects and put the camera on a tripod, do mirror lock up, manual focus, etc.

you might also want to not shoot wide open...it may be sharper at f/8 or so