Juvenile Eastern Bluebird Question

[Ed Vatza]

I have a question. I was out last evening and made some images of a small group of Eastern Bluebirds. Conditions were less than ideal as a very thick cloud cover passed over us. When I got home and looked at the images, my first impression was that these images looked really, really soft. Then when I looked again and thought about it a bit, I came to the conclusion that these are young Bluebirds and they still have the soft downy-type feathers that are soft and not the image. Of course, it is possible both the feathers and image are soft. This image is a pretty heavy crop. Your thoughts?

Canon 30D and 300mm f/2.8L IS with 2X TC; tripod-mounted

1/1000 sec at f/5.6; ISO 800; 1/3 EV; Natural light (should have used some fill)

[Lance Peters]

Hi Ed - very first questions that spring to mind - How heavy of a crop and have you sharpened the Image in post processing. I always find that any image with a 2x converter is generally softer than without and requires some additional PP sharpening.

:)

[Alfred Forns]

Hi Ed the feather will make a difference in the sharpening !!! Some you can not get to look sharp The light also has a huge contribution since very flat light is not conducive to sharp images. Don't have the edge effect.

Lance the 300 2.8 will produce razor sharp images with the converter even wide open. You will always have better results without a converter but they are sharp.

[Nonda Surratt]

Second what Alfred said and I also wonder ow much of a crop?

[Katie Rupp]

Hi Ed, it looks to me like some of the softness might be a touch of noise so maybe fill would have been a good idea (hind-sight, right?) Cute little bird, though.

[Ed Vatza]

Thanks folks! I appreciate the feedback and comments. I like the 300 2.8 and 2x TC combination. Its just these darn tiny little birds. :)

FYI, the crop was down from 3456 pixels to about 1200 pixels on the long side.