Canon 60D, Canon EF 300mm f4L IS + 1.4x, 1/1250 sec f5.6 Tv, ISO 400. I visited the dam at Conowingo, Maryland for the first time today and had a great time observing the eagles. This immature eagle was the only instance I observed of one of these raptors approaching the water to fish. The young eagle came up empty. I have only owned my 60D for 3 weeks and my lens for 1 week. Could this image be sharper? I did need to crop this image somewhat. All feedback and suggestions are greatly appreciated.
Hi Ron- The 300/4 is a super performer and works well with the 1.4 tc. To answer your question, the answer is yes, this image could be sharper. Perhaps the crop is part of the issue? How many pixels were left after you cropped? A looser crop and some more sharpening may rescue what could be a pretty nice image.
Thanks John. I did not have much space in front of the bird to work with when I cropped this particular image. But, in addition, I was also a little uncertain about how to maintain pixels and still reduce the size of the image so that I could post it in this forum. I do have a few more shots of this bird's sequence in which he swooped down to the water for which I have more room to crop. However, I am reluctant to post more than one shot since that is the forum guidelines. I am still in the stage of getting mixed results in my photos and not always certain why (sometimes images are sharp sometimes not). By the way, this eagle did in fact get something to eat out of the water. I could not see it until I enlarged the image. I guess that's why I wear glasses and the eagle does not.
Ron, Nice banking flight shot. I wasn't able to get too many close encounters during my one morning at Conowingo this year. Good comments from John. In addition, I might suggest some NR on the background only (not the bird).
There are some good guidelines somewhere on BPN about resizing an image for posting - maybe one of the moderators could steer you to them. Basically, what I recall from those guidelines is as follows: After you have done all of your post processing EXCEPT sharpening, make a duplicate of the image and resize it using the Image/Image Size command. Change resolution to 72 and width to 1024 px ("constrain proportions" box checked). Then sharpen the resized image to taste, while viewing it at 100%. Then use the "File/Save for Web & Devices", making sure the "embed color profile" and "convert to sRGB" boxes are checked. Open the Optimize Menus using the icon at the far upper right of the screen, and open "Optimize to File Size", changing the desired file size to 250. Hit "Save" to save it to your file location of choice. Other folks use different variations of this, but this seems to work pretty well for me.
Thanks Bill. Your guidelines are a good start. I have noted further anomalies in my lens recently so I decided to drop off my camera, lens and extender at the Canon service center in New Jersey, since they are all new and under warranty. I am fortunate to live close enough to do so. The lens and extender appeared to work best when the subject was perhaps 20 feet away or closer. Subsequently efforts convinced me I had a problem with the autofocus on subjects much more than 25 feet away (inconsistent or soft focusing became more prevalent at greater distances).
Immature Bald Eagle at Conowingo Dam
