Help Shooting Birds

smoke665 · Feb 13, 2017

@astroNikon LOL it was on the counter it had red easy to see Letters!

No filters. Going to print out some test targets and try it again. I bought this used some time ago, and frankly it keeps getting put up, because of questiontionable performance. Might be time to look for something else.

Derrel · Feb 13, 2017

Smoke--not sure which exact Sigma 100-300 you own, but I owned the Sigma 100-300mm f/4 EX HSM lens for about 10 years; sold it last month. it never was all 'that" sharp, but I used to use it for softball and baseball games, where the focal length range and f/4 max aperture made it a pretty "hot lens" on DX-Nikon back in the mid-2000's era.

The thing is--1/50 second at 300mm...that speed is dangerous...look at the goose black and white juncture on their necks--see that faint line of white? That's movement. The high-ISO shot at the proper minimum shutter speed of 1/320 second really is much better. Slow speed shots at long focal length MIGHT turn out sharp 10,15,20 percent of the time, but the reject rate will be pretty substantial on many subjects, or if the conditions are not 100% ideal.

The 100-300 f/4 EX HSM Sigma was wayyyyyyyyy less sharp than the Nikkor 300 f/4 AF-S ED lens was. or even the ancient 300 f/4.5 ED~IF from 1987. it's a long zoom., and was never designed to do heavy crop-ins on...that's the thing with a zoom: if you fill the frame and keep it in its normal wheelhouse, it's fine, but if yuo need to realllllllly crop-in hard, the zoom weaknesses will show.

zombiesniper · Feb 13, 2017

smoke665 said:
I need to find some paper targets

Here's a decent one

smoke665 · Feb 13, 2017

@Derrel I'm not sure which model it is. The geese were barely visible, so it was an extreme crop. The shots today we're at 75 yards. 100% crop then 200% enlargement. So again a really hard crop. Researching how to effectively test the lens. Guess I'll go from there.

smoke665 · Feb 13, 2017

@zombiesniper Thanks I'm going to try that. Looks very much like one I saw at B&H

dxqcanada · Feb 13, 2017

smoke665 said:
@Derrel I'm not sure which model it is.

Take a picture of the lens, we should be able to figure it out.

astroNikon · Feb 14, 2017

smoke665 said:
@Derrel I'm not sure which model it is. The geese were barely visible, so it was an extreme crop. The shots today we're at 75 yards. 100% crop then 200% enlargement. So again a really hard crop. Researching how to effectively test the lens. Guess I'll go from there.

First, take pictures of objects where there is ZERO crop.
Fill the sensor with an image whether the RedBook or something else that has a lot of detail. Do this at 100mm, 200mm and 300mm.

And then use another lens and take a picture, then compare the detail of the two.

astroNikon · Feb 14, 2017

btw, doing extreme crops takes practice from something up close, optimizing your IQ, then going further distances while optimizing you image as you go further and further away. Then being very cognizant of anything in the air that can diffuse the image detail.

This was about 7 miles away, heavily cropped. I do many images heavily cropped. It's basically a dot in the viewfinder, but you learn how to focus on dots.

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