bull elk

[Gary Hamilton]

Taken during the elk rut near Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel in Yellowstone. About 80% of full frame--I cropped a bit from each side.

Canon 1D MK III
Canon 500mm f/4
ISO 640
F/5.6
1/125

all c/c welcome

[Gerald Kelberg]

Hi Gary,

This is a fine stag with a great set of antlers. But my eyes are having a **** of a time working out where the focus is! Head/face look soft apart from the nose and mouth; bey tines look sharp but the main stem of the antlers look soft. Something weird going on here - maybe it is just my eyes! :bugeyed:

[Gary Hamilton]

The face is smooth (no hair) between the eyes and down to the nose, which may be giving it the appearance of being out of focus or soft. The original file had a small piece of grass on the face which was very sharp--I forgot to mention that I cloned that out (I could post that version if needed). The antlers are very sharp on my original so maybe some detail got lost in the translation to the small BPN file size.

[Pieter de Waal]

Hi Gary, impressive image and great set of antlers. Like the eye contact and colours. Agree with a little selective sharpening on the face and eye area.

[DanWalters]

Very impressive antlers and I like the clean background. Image could use just a little red.

[Morkel Erasmus]

Nice bull here Gary!

Unfortunately, to me it is quite evident that there was motion blur on the elk's head. Just look at the eye. :eek3:
The softness presented here is not merely an effect of 'too little' sharpening after downsizing.

Your EXIF settings confirm that it could have been so - using 1/125 on a 500mm focal length (650mm effective FL on the APS-H sensor) is bound to present some issues even with IS turned on and having a good technique...the animal could just move at a faster rate than the chosen SS. I understand the light might have been a limiting factor. You could have sacrificed some ISO for SS? Going to ISO-800 or even ISO-1000 would have enabled a significant gain in SS.

Sorry for my 'directness' - but calling it as I see it and hopefully giving you some pointers on how to avoid this in the future :w3.

As for the crop - I am wondering if tighter won't be better here? Losing some off the bottom and off the RHS? :Whoa!:

[Steve Canuel]

Nice looking bull and I like the BG. I agree with Gerald that focus seems off. As he noted, the tines are sharper than the base of the antlers. Looking at the fur on the ribs just behind the front leg, that looks plenty sharp to me. With his head lowered, the tips of the antlers would be close to the same plane as that sharp fur. One shot focus or one of the servo modes?

[Gary Hamilton]

Thanks for all of your comments and critiques. Upon further review, I can see that there may have been some slight motion blur with the head (a little twist, maybe) and that the eye looks soft. I'll have to take a closer look at the antlers to see what is happening there. I try not to oversharpen images for posting here but this one could use some selective sharpening. I'll play around with it and see if I can improve it for reposting.

Morkel: No problem with your "directness"--I really appreciate your expertise and contributions to this forum.

Dan: I'll try adding some red for the repost.

Gerald: The verdict is in and you can cancel that trip to the eye doctor :t3.

Steve: Definitely AI-Servo mode. Shutter speed may be the main culprit here.

[Harshad Barve]

Gary
I have agree with Morkel here
TFS