Ducks in flight

[prodigy2k7]

I tried a shot at taking some ducks in flight. They turned out not as sharp as I would have hoped. Both images pretty heavily cropped (over half of image removed from left to right)
7D with 70-200mm F/2.8

ISO 100 175mm F/2.8 1/1600 (both images are same settings)

 

[OscarWilde]

I said this earlier in another bird in flight thread, but I'll add it again you need a faster shutter speed. I took pictures of seagulls flying at 1/4000 to get them really sharp! You then have to compensate with ISO and Aperture but it's really the only way to improve the sharpness.

Mind you..... now that I'm really looking it seems more like your F2.8 may be the issue. Because you aren't having motion blur as much as your depth of field is simply on the duck and not the wings! Maybe try lowering that a bit!

Nice pictures though Beautiful ducks!

 

[prodigy2k7]

I said this earlier in another bird in flight thread, but I'll add it again you need a faster shutter speed. I took pictures of seagulls flying at 1/4000 to get them really sharp! You then have to compensate with ISO and Aperture but it's really the only way to improve the sharpness.

Mind you..... now that I'm really looking it seems more like your F2.8 may be the issue. Because you aren't having motion blur as much as your depth of field is simply on the duck and not the wings! Maybe try lowering that a bit!

Nice pictures though Beautiful ducks!

Yes I was trying to figure that out. If it was depth of field. I don't recall the distance but I was at 200mm with F/2.8 and I did a decent crop. Im guessing by the LOOKS of the second image for example, the bottom wing is blurry due to DoF and the top wing is blurry due to slow shutter speed. I could be totally wrong.

I also did a +2 AF (i think it was positive anyway) micro adjustment recently which took place well after these photos were taken.

Ya I think the first photo diffidently needs a faster shutter speed to freeze those wings and such.

I never really shot birds before and I thought 1/1600 would be fast enough. Ill try somewhere near 1/4000 next time.