First attempt at nature, RAW, editing c&c please

[Plastic]

Today I tried my first attempt at using my cheap Quantaray 70-300 telephoto lens to take nature photos. First time to shoot in RAW format and edit the pictures. What do you think? Be gentle, I'm a newb.
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[pugnacious33]

Not a bad start. You're focus seems soft, but that may be the lens. Also, the exposures seem a bit harsh, but that could be from the lighting conditions. What iso were you shooting?

The owl is the best, but there is alot of wasted space behind it, you might want to crop it. Nice work, keep at it.

 

[Plastic]

Thanks for the comments. The iso was 400.

 

[davebmck]

There seems to be a lot of noise in the pictures, or you have over sharpened them. This is especially evident in the background of the first shot. Nice shot of the owl. How did you get that?

 

[Ptyler22]

Can't give any solid analysis of the image quality or any thing at this point since I am on my iPod touch but I just wanted to say that I really like that owl shot, it's an awesome capture. Keep doing what you're doing and you'll get some really nice shots!

 

[AdamBomb]

Where do you live?!

 

[Brian L]

I have that same lens for my pentax. I like it a lot. However my pictures come out a bit sharper then yours. I would say double check your camera settings. That is a great lens to take portraits with as it blurs out the background nicely. I like the lens cause I can do so much with it including macro of flowers. Great started lens and I love mine for the price and what I get out of it. Keep up the work and play around with the lens. Took me a bit to get used to it.

 

[Plastic]

Thanks again for the comments. I live in West Texas and these prarie dogs are commen. The owls are small burrowing owls that live in the same burrows as the prarie dogs. I did sharpen the pictures quite a bit as I edited them to overcome my lack of focusing skills, or shake or something. I used a monopod but perhaps next time a tripod would be better.

 

[Ptyler22]

They do look pretty soft and noisy on my computer, but I think if you had better glass, those would be great. The shots are still great, but the image quality isn't.

 

[davebmck]

Thanks again for the comments. I live in West Texas and these prarie dogs are commen. The owls are small burrowing owls that live in the same burrows as the prarie dogs. I did sharpen the pictures quite a bit as I edited them to overcome my lack of focusing skills, or shake or something. I used a monopod but perhaps next time a tripod would be better.

Yes, a tripod will help significantly. It is difficult to control camera shake with long lenses unless you can shoot at high shutter speed and/or have image stabilization. When you go to buy a tripod be sure to get a good sturdy one.

 

[OldClicker]

The eyes look over-PSed to me - especially on the first one. If you did PS them, go to the wildlife forum and look at pictures and the eyes. The owl eyes may actually look like that, I don'rknow. - TF

EDIT - and another +++ on using a tripod with a shutter release.

 

[ccssk8ter11]

The owl one is pretty cool. Like others have stated, the focus is a little soft but it was probably a fairly hard capture, im guessing you were pretty far away? And i have that same lense and i know the autofocus is pretty slow and not the greatest. But still pretty good shots imo.