Ooops!

[Dick Boone]

I had this Thrasher nailed (focus, etc.), then he decided to jump. My Nikon D2x and 300f4 were set at ISO 100; 1/1000th sec. @f4. Now the best focus is on the limb behind him. Do you think ISO 400 @f8 would have been enough to keep it all in focus? Even at 1/000th he is not sharp. I cloned in some space on the left, tweaked the color slightly, and light USM, but that's about it. Comments appreciated.

God bless.....Dick

[Judd Patterson]

Dick, the main culprit here seems to be motion blur from the quick movement of your subject. As a result, I think your best bet would have been to go to ISO 400, while keeping your aperture at or near f/4....that just might have given you the faster shutter speed that you need to freeze him. A slight head turn by the thrasher would give you direct eye contact and a much stronger image as well. Full of potential here, and the next time you meet this trasher I have a feeling that things will go your way...or at least I'm rooting for you!

[Alfred Forns]

Hi Dick Would set up with more than 100 ISO I know the D2x does not real clean ISO but 320 or 400 would seem more reasonable Aperture wise would do as suggested by Judd and go wide open

For birds do try to get a sharp eye All else will usually look good About the only time I stop down is photographing small birds at minimum distance

[Robert Amoruso]

Dick,

When I am anticipating action like this and waiting on it, I generally like to use 1/1600 sec of higher - prefer 1/2500 sec. Of course that affects the f/stop and ISO you have to use. Wanting to use a smaller f/stop for greater depth of field forces you to up the ISO so more noise.

It is all about tradeoffs. Personally, I would rather have noise then lack of sharpness due to a low shutter speed. Unsharp and I am going to delete for sure. Noise I can work with. Generally, I won't stop down in an effort to get more DOF hoping to get the action relatively sharp. I hope they are going to fly in a direction that behooves my creating the best image. In this case you would have wanted to thrasher to take off slightly towards you. He didn't so good luck next time. This happens all the time. You hope for the best and plan the settings in advance to be ready for the action.

[Brian Wong]

Hi Dick!

As I see it, the branch behind the bird in focus ... and the bird is out of focus. So, to my thinking, either the bird moved (motion blur), or that the bird moved out of the focus plane. If I felt it was due to motion blur, then I would try to increase the shutter speed as described above. I do think that an initial jump should be covered by a shutter speed of 1/1000 (preferably slightly faster as suggested by Robert). However, I am leaning more that the bird jumped out of the focus plane. So I tend to agree with you that f/8 would increase the DOF, and would probably help increase your chances of the bird still in the focus range.

Other factors to consider ... the speed of your camera to acquire and track focus in AI mode can make a difference. Some are better than others, some also have more problems with high contrast, or varied background. Also, you did not mention if you tried using a center point for focusing ... which may be something to try.

[LeeOtsubo]

There's an old tool called Focus Magic. You can d/l a trial version at (surprise!) www.focusmagic.com (http://www.focusmagic.com). It has a motion blur tool that lets you set various parameters to try to bring back OOF images like this. It works as a plug-in for both PS CS2 as well as PSE.