I am relatively new to photography. I love shooting wildlife. I'm an avid backcountry backpacker and I typically carry my camera (Digital Rebel XT), a tri-pod, and two lenses with me. I take wildlife shots with my Canon - EF 75-300mm f/4-5.6 II Zoom Lens. I am constantly frustrated with what I would call the "clarity" of my photos, and I cannot figure out what I am doing wrong. As an example, the photo below I shot with my camera attached to my tri-pod.
I realize that some of the difference is caused by distance, but I still think I am doing something wrong. If anyone can help me figure out the problem, I would greatly appreciate it.
Post processing makes a big difference. Most DSLRs are a bit soft straight from the camera, especially if you shoot RAW.
Did you do any post processing on your images or are those straight from the camera?
As an example I just added a little contrast and sharpened it up a bit and there's much more clarity in it now. Spend a few minutes on the image and it could look even better :)
With the exception of conversion from RAW to JPEG, those images are straight from the camera.
I'm glad to hear that post-shot processing makes such a big difference. I'm currently working my way through a book about how to use Photoshop. My attempts to clean it up with other photo editors (DPP, Camera Raw) have yielded poor results. For some reason the image becomes extremely grainy when I try to add sharpness through them.
How much of a difference does the lens make? I'm considering buying one of the higher end IS lenses so I don't have to use a tripod. I assume the glass in them is much higher quality so that should help clean things up even more.
That will help a bit but digital photography is not film photography and almost always needs SOME minor tweaking in sharpness at the very least for your photos to look dynamic ...
The Canon EF 75-300mm f/4-5.6 II is a quite old lens (1995), did you use this on a film body before your digital? (just curious and if so how did the shots come out?)
Can you give us the Specifics like Shutter, Aperture, ISO and focal length of the (2) shots that you posted?
As Megatherian pointed out dSLR shots are soft and neutral by design (giving more flexibility in post processing)... maybe bump up your in cam sharpness parameter (especially) for this lens.
StDavidson is also correct as to the distance thing.
Many of the budget zooms lose detail and sharpess on the long end. When shooting @ 300mm you will definately want to shoot on a tripod and probably want to be around f/8-f/11 to grab/maintain detail and sharpness.
The shots you showed us are pretty cool and with some post processing you could bring them to life.
Actually I had the model wrong. I was using the Canon EF 75-300mm f/4-5.6 III. I've never had a film camera. I upgraded to an SLR after using a Fuji FinePix 3800 for a few years.
The two shots are the same - the close up was cropped and edited by somebody else. The shot information is as follows:
Shutter Speed: 1/200
Aperture: F5.0
ISO: 200
Focal Length: 160mm
AF Mode: AI Focus AF
White Balance: Auto
Metering Modes: Partial Metering
The aperture is so open because it was dusk on a cloudy day. It's unfortunate that the focal length is only about half of what it could have been. I was hiking at the time and it was a tense encounter in which my 3 hiking partners and I startled the bear. I did not want to move more than I had to because the bear was agitated and I did not want to spark a charge so I just shot with the focal length that the lense was set to.
I really hope I can bring them to life. I'd like to fix this one up so I can frame it because it was the closest encounter I ever hope to have with a grizzly bear.
If you send me a full sized version of this under 9 meg ... I would love to play with it in Photoshop CS2 and see what I could do ... and you are right ... you don't wanna get a LOT closer to a grizzly baar! :)
Greetmir@yahoo.com if you are interested in me playing with it ...
Absolutely. That would be awesome. Should I send the RAW file (~7 meg) or a JPEG? I'll have to wait until tomorrow to send this because my internet connection at home is too slow.
I'm glad to hear that post-shot processing makes such a big difference. I'm currently working my way through a book about how to use Photoshop. My attempts to clean it up with other photo editors (DPP, Camera Raw) have yielded poor results. For some reason the image becomes extremely grainy when I try to add sharpness through them.
Check out this thread for examples of what post-processing can do to a photo. Some amazing stuff in there.
As for sharpen, are you using Sharpen or Unsharp Mask (USM). USM is better and you have more control of the results. You'll see lots of people list in at the end of their post processing steps.
I've had similar problems shooting wildlife, so I understand your frustration. Those shots look pretty good for straight out of the camera. Once your post processing skills are better, you should be able to turn it into a nice shot.
It looks like you have some noise showing up when you sharpen. You might try (gently!) using something like Neat Image to remove some of the noise before doing any other work on the image.
I'm a Nikon person, so I don't have any experience with your lens, but I had a Nikon 70-300 f/4-5.6, and I had all sorts of problems with sharpness, especially at the long end of the zoom. This was compounded by the fact that I was trying to shoot handheld at 300mm. I found that, for me, it was impossible to get a clear shot handheld at 300mm, no matter what shutter speed. I got somewhat better results by using a tripod, and *much* better results by buying a professional quality lens, even with my cheap D70 body. I'd try the tripod (or at least a monopod) first, because it's cheaper.
Before you spend a bunch of money on a lens, think about how much it's worth to get that great shot. Also think about the fact that professional quality long zooms are *heavy*. I mean really...heavy.
OMG ... I am SO sorry! ... I forgot all about this until I was cleaning out my email the other day. I hope you think later is better than never ...
I cropped out a lot of dead space, played a bit with the dynamic range to get more detail in the shadows and bring down the brightness of the road a bit. I cleaned up some noise and blurred the background to pull back on the distraction from the bear by the purple flowers and sharply in focus and contrasty rocks on the road, I dodged the eyes a bit to bring out the keylight reflections in them ... a bit of a bump on saturation and a touch of Unsharp Mask and this is what I came up with.
I hope you like it. I am sending you the full size tif file via email.
I use a 70-300 lens for all my animal photos and have pretty good luck with it. But unless I am shooting in bright, sun, I shoot almost all my animal photos at ISO 400 because the faster you can have that shutter speed, the sharper your photo is going to be. I haven't noticed the grain being nearly the problem that blur is on a slower ISO setting.
My lens does have an image stabilizer on it tho, and I've decided that I'm never going to own another lens again without one. It makes a HUGE difference!
But I agree with everyone else -- processing is a MUST! I take all my photos in RAW, and bumping up the shadows just a tad, and then adjusting the levels and contrast make a big difference in how it turns out -- and sharpening of course -- but not too much or it looks harsh.
GOOD LUCK! Oh. . .and I'm really jealous by the way that you got that close to get such a cool photo of a BEAR!!!! You LUCKY!!!!!!
Here's my try! It was a very low resolution photo, though. So, there is quite a bit of artifact in the photo. My best, though without the original file! By the way...the full size is much sharper than this thumbnail!
This thread has some pretty good examples too -- some by me : ) -- and be sure to check out the Tutorials and "How'd They Do That?" articles under the Learn menu.
For an image like this bear, you might try enhancing the contrast using the Unsharp Mask filter with low-amount/high-diameter settings; the following are a good starting point:
Amount: 15%
Diameter: 60
Threshold: 0
This often has the effect of adding "clarity" to the image, without creating halos around hair/fur or other fine details, as often happens when people try to sharpen images. Sometimes it works to use lower values and apply twice.
I went ahead and made examples from your larger (1024) images, sized down by 50%:
Resized original: With USM at 12%/48 dia/TH = 0: Adjusted with RGB Curve (see below): Adjusted with USM at 12%/48 dia/TH = 0: Combo Plate -- Adjusted, USM at 12%/48 dia/TH = 0 and then 88%/0.8 dia/TH = 5: Screenshot of RGB Curve Adjustment Layer:
You may have said this and I missed it but is the image you posted a crop of a larger photo or is it resized so what we see?
If that is a 100% crop then it is not too bad, to get a really sharp looking image at the pixel level takes very good lens. I note that you at the aperture opened up pretty wide, you might find that the lens gets a lot sharper at f/8 or so.
I want to thank all of you for the overwhelming response I've received about this photo. I clearly still have a lot to learn about both shooting and editing, but this thread has been a tremendous help. Seeing the sample edits has given me a lot of hope for what I can eventually do with this photo. That means a lot because this photo was probably a once in a lifetime shot.
