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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Andrew S." data-source="post: 220602" data-attributes="member: 18020">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!</blockquote>

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