Details and a shove in the right direction

I live on a tributary of the Potomac. In the summer we get a lot of Osprey's, I think the Eagles drive them away from the main river and up into our area.

My pictures don't show the details like the ones I see here on this Forum. So I'm looking for where I may be going wrong.

I use a Nikon D810 with a AF-S Nikkor 28-300mm f3.5-5.6 lens. Normally I set the F-stop to F10 and let the camera control the rest. Should I be working on being specific on the ISO speed?

PS: This is my first post.

Thanks in advance.

Attachment 164249
F13, 1/8000 second, ISO-3600

Hi Chuck, welcome to the forum. By looking at your settings you should be around f/6.3 - f/7.1, shutter speed around 2500 - 3200, and your ISO much , much, lower to around 400 - 500.
You can recover some of those shadow areas in PS in Shadow/highlight recovery.

-Tim

Thanks.

I'm glad I found this forum.

Hi Chuck,

I use the D750 and I won't go North of ISO3200 and I will use 3200 with extreme caution.

Chuck....I shoot a lot of birds in flight with my aperture set at 5.6- 7.1 and a shutter speed of around 1/1600- 1/2000 sec. I adjust my ISO to the lowest value I can to get these settings. Your chosen ISO will of course depend on the amount of light you have to work with. The higher your ISO the more chance there is for digital noise in the image so raise your ISO only enough to get the required shutter speed and aperture. Keep them coming!

Hi Chuck and welcome. #1: there is no need to work at f/10 for birds in flight as you will always have lots of d-o-f because of the distance from the camera to the subject. #2: that would yield a much more workable ISO. #3: Best to learn to work in Manual mode. #4: try to work with even lighting--I love white skies for flight. #5: the image is not sharply focused. Not sure why as I do not know the gear. #5: Practice, practice, and post. There is no better way to learn.
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