Trouble with new lens
- This topic has 10 replies, 6 voices, and was last updated Aug 14, 2007 at 10:02 pm by
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Just received my new lens yesterday.
Seafood.
Noise will be caused by shooting at higher ISOs. Reduce your ISO to improve the noise. 100-200 ISO is what I normally shoot outdoors unless light is very low.
In the upper range of that lens, you will need to be shooting at fairly high shutter speeds (500-625/sec) to freeze any subject motion and control camera shake unless you are truly steady or have image stabilization.
Assumming it is about F4.5-5.6, you will need to shoot well lit subjects in order to have low ISO and high shutter speed. The lower end of the zoom range will work better at low light for you.
Get the shot in the camera right and you will not need a lot of post processing. That means crop in the camera, get a good exposure and eliminate the blur.
Post some samples sometime. Would love to see some.
Scott
A sample or two with the exif would help shed some light Seafood.
With regards to noise. Thats a function of a few things but the main culprit is ISO and underexposure, either of which can result in unacceptable noise. Noise from high ISO depends mostly on your bodies NR (noise reduction) capabilities. In a nut shell the more expensive, higher end bodies tend to handle it better. I use a 30D and am often at ISOs between 400 and
Went out at lunch and found this guy. Took some shots with the new lens.
I think I am comparing apples to oranges because the shots I struggled with the other night hiking(mostly of my significant other…and I am sure she doesnt want to be pasted across the internet) were in much lower light than the shots I took today. Although in this picture…I feel that the heron is not as sharp as it could be.
I’d try again tomorrow afternoon with the ISO somewhere closer to 100 or 200 and would possibly try focusing manually if you knew ahead of time that were likely to be cropping a lot.
Birds are tough Seafood. Even with my 400mm Im often cropping alot of the time, you can never have enough reach. Few things will differentiate long lenses faster than heavy crops. Its where you really see the difference between the best lenses and prosumer lenses. Even my Canon 100-400L was very noticeably softer than my 400 5.6 when I cropped heavily. With no crops you couldnt see any difference in images (usually).
I think in this case its not so much that the lens is bad, its just the images ( a result of resolving ) not going to stand up to heavy crops. If you work within the lenses limts it should be fine but with birds if you want tack sharp shots you probably will need to get alot closer. Thats not easy with birds though.
Try a couple exercises.
1) Take some frame filling shots of a dollar bill, news print, or brick work.Then review them and see how the print stands up.2) Try some dogs runnning in a park etc. That can proxy as some moving wildlife and you can get close enough that you wont be feeling the need to crop alot.
3) Practise on Gulls. They make good practise for birds in flight, will let you get close
Thanks all for your thoughts.
Seafood.
Aside from the good advice of the others, you mentioned you were shooting in dummy mode. Don’t know what camera you are using, but on Canon bodies on full auto mode, autofocus catches the nearest subject–the rock–and focuses on that. The rock in your photo looks in focus, while the bird is on the back end of the focus and with the shallow depth of field from shooting wide open (dummy mode will prefer that), your bird is out of focus.
Try shooting in program mode and use the focus lock feature which allows you to depress the shutter button halfway and focus on the intended subject and then recompose the shot and fully depress the shutter to capture your image.
Unless you have a reason to use manual mode, program mode should be your preferred mode as it allows you to use more features than full auto mode. Study your camera manual. You’ll find a lot of useful stuff in there. 🙂
Post a follow-up shot and see if that helps on the focus issue.
ScottSeafood.
Unless you have a reason to use manual mode, program mode should be your preferred mode as it allows you to use more features than full auto mode.
ScottI disagree slightly, program mode is better than auto mode, but I believe for really quality photos, aperture priority or shutter priority (which ever is more appropriate for the subject) should be your preferred mode.
Thanks for the continued thoughts.
I tend to shoot more in Shutter priority…I think because thats just the way my right brained brain works.
That’s all real good advice above.
The only thing I could add is lens calibration.
I’ve had a few (Canon) lenses from new that were not calibrated properly and were soft most of the time wider open.
(bigger apatures- smaller numbers )I think it’s a common problem.
Now when I get a new lens or have a problem with an old one I check the accuracy of the focus with a large steel ruler.
With the camera on a tri-pod it’s pointed at the ruler on a 45 deg angle and focused on a number & line.
You need the lens at it’s minimum focusing distance.
If you take 6 or so frames fucused on 10 and 9 or 11 are sharp you might have a problem.
A lens that’s half an inch out close up will be very soft on larger subjects further out.Canon have been very good about fixing the lenses and generaly after they do they work very well.
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A picture is thousand words that takes less than a second while a thousand words is a picture that takes a month.
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