My hike...

[SaraJ]

I like to hike and take pictures of the animals I find but they never come out as sharp as I want them to. I know a tripod would help but I usually don't have time to set one up. Any tips?

 

[jjparson]

There are a lot of options to increase sharpness. If you have not read "Understanding Exposure" - you may want to consider that. A couple of options.

* Make sure your shutter speed is sufficient to decrease motion blur from either the animal or camera shake
* Make sure your aperture is set to give you the desired depth of field
* Adjust your ISO to fit the top two bullets above

Aside from adding additional light, this is pretty much what you have to work with. Keep at it and you will figure out that sweet spot that will yield the best results for you. Good luck and welcome to the forum.

 

[sapper6fd]

I LOVE BEAVER! No really, I do. Its the mascot for all of us Engineers.

 

[paigew]

what were your settings for this shot?

 

[Big Mike]

I LOVE BEAVER! No really, I do. Its the mascot for all of us Engineers.

Based on the tail (maybe shadow of the tail) and the file name, I'd say it's an otter, not a beaver.

I like to hike and take pictures of the animals I find but they never come out as sharp as I want them to. I know a tripod would help but I usually don't have time to set one up. Any tips?

Welcome aboard. A tripod can help to get sharper shots, because it can greatly reduce the movement of the camera during the exposure. But that won't help if your subject is moving. In order to get sharper photos (less motion blur) you need to use faster shutter speeds. How fast is fast enough? Depends on the movement and the focal length of the lens.

So what camera & lens are you using?

 

[willard3]

If you can figure out how to include metadata (exif) information with the file, it's easier to see your settings and give you advice.

 

[SaraJ]

It is an Otter. Actually there were two of them but didn't get a good picture of the two together. I was using Nikon VR 55-200mm f/4-5.6 lens and a D3100 body. My settings were 200mm, ISO1800, 1/640, f/11, white balance was on shade. I had it set this way because I was taking pictures at the same pond in the shade. I didn't get them to be very clear either.

Thanks for all of the feedback!

 

[Big Mike]

Your settings look pretty good, although you probably don't need to use an aperture as small as F11. F8 would probably give you enough DOF and allow for a faster shutter speed.

As for White Balance, I'd suggest shooting in RAW, which gives you the ability to change the WB on the computer afterward.

I think we will need to see more photos and get more information, to diagnose your sharpness issue. The usual suspect is that your shutter speed it too slow. 1/200 with VR should be good, but who knows. (did you have the VR turned on? )

Did you crop the image at all?

 

[SaraJ]

Big Mike -

I am pretty new to all of this, I appreciate all of the help.

I did shoot in RAW, since I do most of the time, is it best to leave the white balance on auto?

My VR was on. If I am shooting on a tripod, should I turn the VR off?

The image is cropped.

Also, have another picture I would like you to see if you don't mind. I tried to put it in this message but it said it was too big.

 

[Big Mike]

I did shoot in RAW, since I do most of the time, is it best to leave the white balance on auto?

Different people have a different though process for this one. Some like to set the WB for the light their in (sunny, cloudy etc.) so they don't have to change it later. Others might take it step further and set a custom WB for the conditions they are in. Personally, I just leave it in AWB most of the time and do my white balance corrections (if needed) in Lightroom.

My VR was on. If I am shooting on a tripod, should I turn the VR off?

Yes. VR (or I.S. on a Canon) works via a gyroscopic effect, thus is has moving parts etc. But when the lens is perfectly still, that gyroscope will start to impart motion to the lens. So if you've been taking a bunch of shots (on a tripod) and they all seem much more blurry than they should...that is probably the culprit.
Of course, check the manual that came with the lens.

If you have any sharpness issues, cropping is just going to exacerbate the problem.

Also, have another picture I would like you to see if you don't mind. I tried to put it in this message but it said it was too big.

Cameras give us files big enough for printing. Displaying on a screen uses much lower resolution (about 300 PPI for print, about 72-100 for screen). So when you're going to upload for web viewing, it's best to resize the image first. Not only that, but apply some JPEG compression as well, so that the file size is nice and small.
I'm not sure what the limits are for upload to the site, that's kind of a newer feature. I often host photos on my own website, then just link/display them from there.

 

[SaraJ]

I figured out the JPEG compression and got it to upload. I had an opportunity to take some great shots like this one and managed to butcher them all. This has the same settings as the first picture except the ISO is 3200. I think my camera may not be able to shoot that high without having noise in the picture. Anything else you can tell me to correct would be great.

 

[Big Mike]

FYI, you should also resize your photos before uploading. That image is 3820x3055 pixels. A typical screen resolution is something like 1280x1024...so really, for displaying on a computer monitor, the files only need to be 800-1000 pixels wide.

Yes, ISO 3200 is getting pretty high for most camera, but a little noise is better than a slow shutter speed (and thus a possibly blurry photo).

The problem with this one, is that it's quite a bit under exposed. Looking at the histogram, all of the pixels are on the left side of the graph, so you could have gone much brighter without blowing out anything important.

 

[SaraJ]

Thanks for the help!