Nikon NY Repair Center

Originally Posted by Woodyg3

Yeah, always use group or dynamic for birds in flight.

Were you using single point on the Heron in the shot above? If so, putting the point right on the feathers on the bird's back might have provided good contrast and better focus.

Woody, I used both dynamic 153 as well as single point. For some reason, single point just doesn't seem to cut it with birds. I don't know if it's because wide open, it's only f/6.7 (even though I stopped down). Not sure there is enough info getting to the sensor in these types of situations. I know people have mentioned focusing on something with more contrast, but sometimes there really aren't a whole lot of options. All of the photos of the heron were a little soft no matter whether dynamic 153 or single point.

But there is a definite improvement overall with better AF ability (meaning sharpness) even with the heron's situation than what I was getting before sending in the lens for service.

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Obviously Nikon did something beneficial when this lens was in for repair. This was a horizontal image - only cropped to a vertical without cropping anything from the top or bottom. Considering this was shot at f/6.7, it's pretty darned good. I did take photos at f/8 and f/9, but I was testing the lens for sharpness. A little Shake Reduction was added in Photoshop.

I was able to move around behind the hawk to change what was in the background. This perspective was pretty nice compared with other images that had lots of branches.

One more of the hawk from a different vantage point. No Shake Reduction done this time though. I tried 2 or 3 times, but it made squiggly lines all around the edges as well as other distortion. But it didn't seem as though it was quite as necessary as some of the other images.