My bird shots are just horrible! I need some help!

[Mike D90]

Those must have cheered you up.a vast improvement your on the right road now

Certainly helped a little but I am still frustrated with a problem that I think is focus area.

I managed to get much better exposure and DOF and lower noise but I cannot for the life of me get tack sharp on the eyes.

When I ran these images (below) through ViewNX I checked the focus spot function and almost none of them had focus on the eye. But the eye is exactly where I placed my focus indicator, which is set to single point AF-S, and I use back button AF method.

Still, I am unsure if it really is a focus issue or if I am just trying to get detail out of an image that is taken in too low of light. With winter almost here the sun is very low and barely makes it above tree level when you live in the woods.


Anyway, here is the best of what I shot today. All I have done to these is a crop, a little bit of adjustment to levels, some exposure adjustment and sharpening.

 

[Don Kuykendall_RIP]

I think they are a lot better. Does the D90 have back focus adjusting?

 

[Mike D90]

I think they are a lot better. Does the D90 have back focus adjusting?

You have to remove the bottom panel of the camera body and turn some screws. I am afraid to try that.

 

[dramtastic]

Maybe time for a lens upgrade Mike. Possibly the 70-300mm Nikon for a bit more reach for starters. Never used it but there are others here that seem to rate it. Can I ask when you mention tack sharp what sort of bird shots you've seen here that represent this. I've seen very few. I've seen amazing bird shots online but these are mostly shot with very fast, powerful, long telephoto lenses that cost a fortune.

 

[Don Kuykendall_RIP]

You have to remove the bottom panel of the camera body and turn some screws. I am afraid to try that.

Some of the Nikons like my D7000 have it in the menu system.

 

[Mike D90]

Can I ask, when you mention tack sharp, what sort of bird shots you've seen here that represent this.

Yours.

 

[Mike D90]

Some of the Nikons like my D7000 have it in the menu system.

I was hoping the D90 did as well but it doesn't.

 

[dramtastic]

Thanks but I've only put up a few that I consider to be tack sharp. Some others have been reasonable. If I want to go to the expense of getting more consistently sharp shots, then I'd be looking at a 5K lens and that's probably second hand. Law of diminishing returns though, I would maybe only achieve a net gain of 5% in sharpness over the very best I can take now. For all those awesome stationary bird shots you see online a fast 500mm plus lens is necessary I believe. For the most part birds just don't let you get close enough to behave like they do in those shots. It's got to be that they can't see you. So it's filling the frame at long distances from the subject, with a lens that performs extremely well right through to the maximum focal length. I'm thinking about the Sigma 300-800mm 5.6 as my next lens. I hear it's wonderful for hand held BIF shots.

 

[Mike D90]

Well, most of the images of birds I see here are much sharper than mine by any standard.

I know this is not a proper "scientific" test but I wanted to rule out either camera or lens as a possible culprit as well as my own eyes or mis-adjusted diopter.

I shot these just a few minutes ago with two different lenses and different ISO settings.

This shot is the 55-200mm VR ED lens I use most. ISO was at 200, which I almost never get to shoot at.

This shot is sharp all the way to 300% enlargement even at a low quality JPEG image with no post adjustments.

 

[Mike D90]

This next image is using the 35-105mm at ISO 200 as well.

Again, sharp through out.

 

[Mike D90]

And finally this is again the 35-105mm lens at ISO 1600, which is where a lot of my bird shots are due to the low light of the seasonal sun. I think ISO noise is my issue more so than focus. It is either that or I am having to use such a large aperture that my DOF is so thin I cannot focus the entire head of the bird and the eye gets soft.

 

[Mike D90]

I am going to try to focus on some other things to photograph and try to get better light so to keep my ISO lower and see what happens.

 

[Don Kuykendall_RIP]

I like the way you are approaching this. Always good to work to learn the limits of your equipment and figure out how to do what you want to do.

 

[dramtastic]

Birds are very tricky. I can shoot a small lizard on a rock from 15 meters away and get it tack sharp with great detail almost every time. I look back at the landscape and street shots I took recently in Vanuatu and I'm generally happy with the sharpness. Just wack on the 50mm prime and shoot, with not a lot to worry about in post. Birds are a frustrating drug!

 

[mikew_RIP]

Your heading in the right direction Mike,you say the focus point is not where you had it when viewed in NX this is most likely due to you moving the camera when pressing the shutter,are you using a tripod if so consider some form of remote release if the D90 will take one.
Dramastic makes a lot of sense in his comments about lenses and what to expect,i have said before most of us are working with some kind of compromise.my main birding lens cost me just over £600 and it still falls short but i enjoy what it will do and its the best i could afford for the way i like to work,don't get me wrong a lottery win would mean the most expensive gear Nikon make,the picture would still be down to me but i would know that.
When working in low light at a feeding station i use a tripod or bean bag and use shutter speeds as low as 1/40th but i take 3-5 shots in burst after all its free at that stage.

 

[Mike D90]

Your heading in the right direction Mike,you say the focus point is not where you had it when viewed in NX this is most likely due to you moving the camera when pressing the shutter,are you using a tripod if so consider some form of remote release if the D90 will take one.
Dramastic makes a lot of sense in his comments about lenses and what to expect,i have said before most of us are working with some kind of compromise.my main birding lens cost me just over £600 and it still falls short but i enjoy what it will do and its the best i could afford for the way i like to work,don't get me wrong a lottery win would mean the most expensive gear Nikon make,the picture would still be down to me but i would know that.
When working in low light at a feeding station i use a tripod or bean bag and use shutter speeds as low as 1/40th but i take 3-5 shots in burst after all its free at that stage.

I have not used my tripod yet and I also have the Nikon MC2 (?) remote release that plugs into the GPS port. May give those a try.

I guess this is just boiling down to not enough light and too slow of a lens to get what I am looking for with handheld camera. I cannot keep a fast enough shutter speed to freeze any movement and get enough light for exposure and still have enough DOF to keep everything in focus with a wide open aperture.

 

[Mike D90]

I like the way you are approaching this. Always good to work to learn the limits of your equipment and figure out how to do what you want to do.

True. I must know what my camera can and cannot do otherwise I cannot figure out what I myself am doing wrong.

 

[Don Kuykendall_RIP]

True. I must know what my camera can and cannot do otherwise I cannot figure out what I myself am doing wrong.

On each camera I have had so far except the latest one I have gone out and done very controlled tests on things like ISO just to see how far I could go and still get acceptable results. Did the same thing on a number of different features of the camera. First it was just fun but it really did help me get more out of my camera and hopefully a better photographer in the end.

Keep working on it and I am sure you will achieve your goal.

 

[Andrew S.]

I shoot birds all the time. They are hard to get right.
I shoot wide open unless I am close enough to run into depth of field issues.
I try to push the shutter speeds up very high to freeze details by use of higher ISO's. (You took some demo shots at 1/8 and 1/4 second and that is too slow to hold a camera steady hand held.)
I use a single point focus and try to get the eye in focus. (very important!)
It looks to me that you have a couple of issues, the focus is not sharp since you are trying to shoot multiple subjects in some pictures. The 3D focus is confused. Concentrate on one bird. It seems to help the autofocus when the sun is on the subject and with a slow lens it will help even more.
Try to get as many pixels on that bird as possible so that you do not have to crop so much. That magnifies any issues that you have with poor focus and ISO noise, you cannot make a silk purse out of sow's ear no matter how much you post-edit.
Ultimately you must shoot and shoot more to learn the basic things that all photographers must learn about aperture openings, lighting conditions and auto-focus. Lots of deletes to get good shots. In the end I'm afraid that the quality of your shots will be directly related to the amount of money that you spend on your camera and lenses. The high end stuff will take astounding pictures with every barb on every feather in sharp focus, if you are lucky, since with birds you don't get mulligans.
​Good luck!

 

[Mike D90]

I had some decent sunlight this afternoon and the little birds were feeding like crazy. I decided to give this another shot.

Today, I got much much closer. How I was able to stand, in the open, just 4 feet from the feeder is a mystery to me; but I did. The birds, particularly one little fellow, just seems to not be that frightened, and is why I got more shots of him than of the smaller Chickadee.

Getting closer I was also able to change my shot angle to get a better lighting on the subject.

Today's results were much improved over what I have before. Still not absolutely tack sharp, as I would like, but I am chocking this up to either an unsharp lens at that focal length or handheld shooting issues.

I was able to keep teh shutter speed at 1/500th and no slower than 1/320th on S-priority. ISO varied between 200 and 800 depending on light and zoom length. Aperture was at f5.6 at 200mm to f4.5 at shorter zoom length.

I was able to get some shots with focus point on the eye. I was also able to crop close and not lose that much resolution and clarity. Smart Blur and Unsharp Mask removed a lot of the ISO grain noise.