Was the T2i a mistake?

I just always kept the iso at 100 because I had reader that the lower the iso the better since there is less noise. Is is f/8 or so the best with shooting all wildlife?

It is best for that lens.

Shooting at 100 iso is preferable, but that's in a perfect world. If you look at all the wild life photographers, most are shooting at 800 iso or above. You can remove noise later. And all in all, you're going to get a good looking image either way.

Uggh, ISO 100? Shoot at the highest ISO you can (realistically, so around ISO800-1600) and overexpose slightly (watch out for blinkies on your preview, and check the histogram) [If you clip the highlights, you've overexposed too much - usually]. Then pull back the exposure in DPP. This is assuming that you are shooting RAW. You are shooting RAW?

There is no benefit in using ISO 100 as against ISO 800 with your camera for what you're doing!

Yes I am shooting raw only. Dang I wish I knew that, I feel like my whole trip to Yellowstone was wasted photo wise

zaathrus wrote in post #10662315
Uggh, ISO 100? Shoot at the highest ISO you can (realistically, so around ISO800-1600)

...SNIP...

There is no benefit in using ISO 100 as against ISO 800 with your camera for what you're doing!

Huh? Come again? Shoot at the highest ISO you can?

NothingRemains10 wrote in post #10660260
I have read 2-3 books by Bryan Peterson, and taken around 6k photos now, and they just don't seem to be getting any better. I understand 10x the amount and have much better lenses now, but it just seems I have a ton of throw away shots. Maybe frustration is just setting in

Stop taking so many photos and go into a learning mode. What you want to do is have a single subject and work on doing everything you need to in order to learn how to handle it and make consistent good photographs of it. Then, go to the next subject.

You need to concentrate on all aspects of photography when working with the exercise subjects - exposure, composition, perspective (actually a part of composition), color control, etc.

If you actually want to learn the basics of photography, it would help GREATLY if you would turn off all of the automation in your camera and do everything with the exposure dial set to "M" (Manual). If you have a lens that you can focus manually without too much problem (and many of the "kit" lenses suck wind for manual focus), I suggest using manual focus as well. Once you have mastered the basics in manual, then start going back to some of the camera's automation (one item at a time) and learn how to control the camera's "thinking".

awelex wrote in post #10662357
Huh? Come again? Shoot at the highest ISO you can?

The guy is shooting wildlife at 400mm it'll do him some good to shoot at 800 or 1600. And like the other guy said if the grain ends up being a huge problem there are programs out there to get rid of the noise. You can fix grain, you can't fix an out of focus or blurred shot.

awelex wrote in post #10662357
Huh? Come again? Shoot at the highest ISO you can?

See the following link that CDS has in his sig. It's a good explanation!

HAMSTTR

zaathrus wrote in post #10662394
See the following link that CDS has in his sig. It's a good explanation!

HAMSTTR

Well, no. You want to shoot at the lowest ISO you can, but if you need a higher shutter speed then push the ISO and "expose to the right". In other words you want to err on the side of over-exposing a little than underexposing when shooting at higher ISO's.

By the way, I think the bird photos you posted look perfectly fine, they just needed a little sharpening.

The other shots were taken in crappy lighting.

NothingRemains10 wrote in post #10662355
Yes I am shooting raw only. Dang I wish I knew that, I feel like my whole trip to Yellowstone was wasted photo wise

Hardly! I bet that most of your photos will print out just fine! Just remember to run "unsharp mask" on them after conversion to TIFF, JPEG, whatever. I tend to use a radius of 4, amount of 0.4 and threshold of 0 for SWMBOs 7D. You'll notice a huge difference!

zaathrus wrote in post #10662394
See the following link that CDS has in his sig. It's a good explanation!

HAMSTTR

Thanks. I know ETTR. But nowhere does it say that you should use the highest ISO possible. In fact, one of the goals of ETTR is to get the highest possible S/R ratio, which would be thwarted by shooting with the highest ISO possible.

versedmb wrote in post #10662409
Well, no. You want to shoot at the lowest ISO you can, but if you need a higher shutter speed then push the ISO and "expose to the right". In other words you want to err on the side of over-exposing a little than underexposing when shooting at higher ISO's.

By the way, I think the bird photos you posted look perfectly fine, they just needed a little sharpening.

The other shots were taken in crappy lighting.

The 7D (and T2i) are optimised to run at higher ISOs rather than lower ISOs so you are actually better off not using the lowest ISOs unless you have to.

The best way to do it is to try different things yourself and see what works!

awelex wrote in post #10662431
Thanks. I know ETTR. But nowhere does it say that you should use the highest ISO possible.

There was a huge discussion on here regarding the different sources of noise, and it was generally agreed (by those that have studied this more than me) that the output is actually going to be better at higher ISOs, especially if overexposed slightly and then pulled back in post. The arguments did check out, and this is in line with what I have experienced. However, I did say realistically - i.e. I'm not advocating shooting at ISO6400 on a 7D in bright sunlight unless you have a good reason to!

zaathrus wrote in post #10662461
There was a huge discussion on here regarding the different sources of noise, and it was generally agreed (by those that have studied this more than me) that the output is actually going to be better at higher ISOs, especially if overexposed slightly and then pulled back in post. The arguments did check out, and this is in line with what I have experienced. However, I did say realistically - i.e. I'm not advocating shooting at ISO6400 on a 7D in bright sunlight unless you have a good reason to!

Before I fire up the search engine, do you happen to remember the thread titles? I'd like to read those discussions as I find the results hard to believe and have experienced quite different results.

cdomaloan wrote in post #10662393
The guy is shooting wildlife at 400mm it'll do him some good to shoot at 800 or 1600. And like the other guy said if the grain ends up being a huge problem there are programs out there to get rid of the noise. You can fix grain, you can't fix an out of focus or blurred shot.

True, but then the recommendation should have been "shoot with the lowest ISO possible that allows you to get blur-free pictures" and not simply "shoot with the highest ISO possible." I never said that the OP shouldn't try higher ISOs.