Distance...

[Newtricks]

I've been wondering of late, how much does distance from sensor plane to subject effect the image quality? Many of the bird photo's I take are at some distance requiring heavy cropping, it seems these shots just are not sharp, here's a shot I took yesterday un-cropped.

300mm - f/4 - 1/1000 - ISO 640 (heavy overcast) - Center weighted metering - 5.4° Angle of View - lens mounted on tripod.


After months of using Lightroom I'm still playing hell with sharpening images, could someone get a better edit of this shot and explain how?
View attachment 65068

Any advice (short of get closer/longer lens) would be helpful.

 

[KmH]

Distance significantly affects image quality.

When you crop you lose image resolution by throwing pixels away. When you crop you effectively zoom in and magnify individual pixels and by doing so you lose sharpness.

Your original above is a 16 MP photo. The crop is a 1.7 MP photo. That's a 900% crop.

Getting closer (field craft) or using a longer focal length are the only viable options.
One way to get closer to birds is to use a blind, and attract the birds to a perch with food.

Tutorials - Sharpness

Make a homemade blind - Bing

 

[JacaRanda]

This is one where I would hate to give incorrect advice. (I'm scared). Since you don't want to read get closer and or get a longer lens................... smaller aperture, faster shutter, less crop.

 

[Newtricks]

I'm pretty much at the limit of my equipment, can't get closer. So what I get is what I get is what I get.

 

[Newtricks]

Getting closer (field craft) or using a longer focal length are the only viable options.
One way to get closer to birds is to use a blind, and attract the birds to a perch with food.

I'm shooting across a river, getting closer just isn't an option, thank you for your time and input.

Anthony

 

[Newtricks]

Since you don't want to read get closer and or get a longer lens...

Not that I don't want to read get a longer lens or get closer... just can't afford a longer lens or get closer .

 

[Newtricks]

I'm shooting 6 - 8 inch birds from across a river at 80+ yards with a 300mm lens. Pushing my equipment to it's limits.

 

[KmH]

Getting closer (field craft) or using a longer focal length are the only viable options.

One way to get closer to birds is to use a blind, and attract the birds to a perch with food.

I'm shooting across a river, getting closer just isn't an option, thank you for your time and input.

Anthony

By using a blind set up on your side of the river and using some bird food, the birds will come to you.
Eliminating both the need to cross the river, improve your field craft skills, or get a longer lens.

 

[Newtricks]

Thank you Keith.

 

[bratkinson]

One of the more compelling reasons I slowly, over 10 years or so, upgraded from a 3MP point & shoot to 5MP P&S to 8MP 30D, 18MP 60D and finally, 22MP 5D mark iii was to 'get more pixels'. I do much of my photography at non-wedding church events. Especially with the 2 P&S Canons I started with, after looking at the pictures on my computer, I sometimes ended up cropping fairly heavily. Knowing nothing about RAW format, or even its existence at the time, I was cropping the daylights out of JPG images which already were down to the 1MP or so size. Needless to say, when I could make out individual pixel 'boxes' on my screen, I knew I was cropping too much. Using the so-called digital zoom on the camera only gave me fewer usable pixels to start with, so I disabled that feature in the menus.

As KMH indicated, you need to get closer, either physically or optically, to get the birds taking up more of the frame. That way, the bird will occupy more pixels, resulting in sharper pictures. Not knowing what lens you are using, it may be possible to add a 1.4x extender without losing too much clarity. Note that Canon extenders are generally limited to some, but not all, L lenses. While a 2x extender would be an option as well, the additional loss of resultant IQ may effectively gain nothing for you.

So, plan B would be to put out some bird food. If you're looking to photograph seed-eating birds, it shouldn't be difficult. But as the bird in the picture appears to be a raptor, you'll have to catch some field mice and let them go on your side of the river. Then wish them "Bon Appitete!" as them come in for dinner.

 

[apaflo]

I'm shooting 6 - 8 inch birds from across a river at 80+ yards with a 300mm lens. Pushing my equipment to it's limits.

Try buying your bird pictures on eBay, because you aren't going to take them with a camera.

Lets think about a serious reality check here. Just imagine that you can buy a D800 with 36 megapixels for $3000 and also come up with the $18,000 bucks for an 800mm lens. With $21,000 worth of great equipment, you can make a perfectly decent print of an 8" bird! The print will be about 2-1/2" wide. Not 16x20, but all of 2"x2-1/2". And that is as good as you can get!

Here's the mechanics. An 800mm lens, on a full frame camera, at 240 feet has an horizontal field of view that covers 130 inches. So lets figure that you will want maybe 13" inches width to cover this 8" bird. That's is 1/10th of the total field of view. Well, the highest megapixel DSLR around produces an image that is 7360 pixels across. 1/10th of that will be 736 pixels, which will be the pixel dimension of the image when it is cropped to put that 8" bird in a 13" wide frame.

You can print a 736 pixel wide image at 300 pixels per inch for high quality. That's 2.45 inches wide.

Or, if you push it, a 200 pixel per inch print wouldn't be all that bad... that's a 3.68 inch wide print. Roughly a 3x4 print, is the biggest that can be made.

It's bird pictures from eBay, or your choice of either buying a boat or enticing the birds to your side of the river.

 

[Nickk]

I have to point out that I love this photo. I played with it in PSP x6 and I could not get anything but smooth out some of the noise at cost of definition. I'm sure you noticed but the mocking bird is actually inches away from snatching what appears to be mayfly or some sort of river fly. I can see it's beak is open when I play with the shadows and contrast...very cool. I mean, from across a river to be able to even tell there was a fly of some sort at that angle is pretty sweet. I adjust the "correction blend" a tad.

 

[Newtricks]

So, plan B would be to put out some bird food. If you're looking to photograph seed-eating birds, it shouldn't be difficult. But as the bird in the picture appears to be a raptor, you'll have to catch some field mice and let them go on your side of the river. Then wish them "Bon Appitete!" as them come in for dinner.

The subject is a Northern Mockingbird, can't entice it closer and fences (to old and fat to climb over them) prevent me from getting closer.

 

[Newtricks]

Lets think about a serious reality check here... Here's the mechanics. An 800mm lens, on a full frame camera, at 240 feet has an horizontal field of view that covers 130 inches. So lets figure that you will want maybe 13" inches width to cover this 8" bird. That's is 1/10th of the total field of view. Well, the highest megapixel DSLR around produces an image that is 7360 pixels across. 1/10th of that will be 736 pixels, which will be the pixel dimension of the image when it is cropped to put that 8" bird in a 13" wide frame.

You can print a 736 pixel wide image at 300 pixels per inch for high quality. That's 2.45 inches wide.

Or, if you push it, a 200 pixel per inch print wouldn't be all that bad... that's a 3.68 inch wide print. Roughly a 3x4 print, is the biggest that can be made.

It's bird pictures from eBay, or your choice of either buying a boat or enticing the birds to your side of the river.

Hey, thank you for the reality check, really! The Los Angeles river was turned into a flood channel decades ago, walled with concrete and fenced off, getting a boat or hopping the fence are not viable options (at least not for my broken old body), thing is, even though it's a wash at this point... Heron, Egrets, ducks, and assorted other birds call it home and it's right out my backdoor. My focus at this point of my life is making people aware that nature and wildlife are just outside our back door. I'd be willing to bet that even in Alaska there are people who see the little white goose with black wings (Ross' Goose) and don't know it's rare to see one south of the arctic circle.

Here's one in SoCal last summer.

 

[Newtricks]

I have to point out that I love this photo. The mocking bird is actually inches away from snatching what appears to be mayfly or some sort of river fly.

Thanks Nick, and yes I did see that the bird was closing in on it's prey, of the set this is my favorite.