Wrong aperature maybe? Pixelated photo.

lawalus · Jun 17, 2024

I took some photos outside, on a semi cloudy day, with sun poking through. It was at a baseball game of my son's.
This photo was taken from a bit far away maybe but nothing too crazy. I am using a Canon EOS 80D and a 70-300 mm ~NANO USM lens.

What am I doing wrong to not get the crisp and super clear photos?

THANK YOU!

Original katomi · Jun 18, 2024

I can see that your iso is way up without looking up your camera spec’s I would say you were pushing the limits of resolution at that iso.
The image seems to have a lot of noise
Edit 10 mins later
Just looked at the spec;s for your camera... you were near to top end of iso
I can understand the settings.
Anyway hope you carry on posting images

pez · Jun 18, 2024

You might check out Topaz DeNoise

ClintLloyd · Jun 18, 2024

pez said:
You might check out Topaz DeNoise

Or drop the shutter speed to 1/500 or 1/1000. Could also open that aperture, wide open would be fine here.

️

pez · Jun 18, 2024

ClintLloyd said:
Or drop the shutter speed to 1/500 or 1/1000. Could also open that aperture, wide open would be fine here. ️

I was thinking in terms of fixing this particular image...

Jonesy83 · Jun 18, 2024

What sort of mode were you shooting in, were you completely in manual? When I'm shooting sports or anything that moves pretty quickly I generally just define my shutter speed and let the camera sort my iso & aperture, I think it's called shutter priority on Canon bodies (it's been a year or so since I owned one, but I think that's right). The bonus here is that you'll also get more consistent exposure if the sun is going in and out of clouds too.

As has been mentioned, set the shutter speed somewhere near 1/500 and 1/1000 and get shooting!

It looks like your son is walking in this shot and the one thing that I thought may have caused the softness is he just moved out of the focus area as you were taking it. Double check your focus mode so that's it's in continuous (Al servo on Canon), use zones instead of single points and use back button focusing.

Doing all of the above greatly improved my keeper rate when it comes anything moving.

snowbear · Jun 18, 2024

Did you have a filter on the front of the lens?

Thiophilos · Jun 18, 2024

It looks like the focus fell slightly behind the subject. See if you can discover why that happened. As mentioned by @Jonesy83 , try continuous focus mode so the camera stays locked on the subject.

I don't see a big problem with noise. The ISO is high but not too high. I agree the shutter speed is unnecessarily high, but I don't see it as the problem here.

You have side lighting here and some lens flare (stray light) and that is affecting the blacks in the image. Were you using a lens hood? The pic would be better if the lighting was more from the front. I know you can't always control that.

DigiFilm · Jun 18, 2024

An aperture of 5.6 or so and a shutter speed of 1/250 would've frozen the slight movement and allowed a much, much lower ISO. It would've also created better background separation.

Woolsocks · Jun 23, 2024

I thought maybe you would like someone to edit the photograph for you.

1. Iso noise reduced with dxo software.

2. Iso noise reduced with noise>reduce noise (Photoshop).

I also used color balance in Photshop to bring in some blues

It matched the color of the houses.

lawalus · Jul 17, 2024

Thiophilos said:
It looks like the focus fell slightly behind the subject. See if you can discover why that happened. As mentioned by @Jonesy83 , try continuous focus mode so the camera stays locked on the subject.

View attachment 276391

I don't see a big problem with noise. The ISO is high but not too high. I agree the shutter speed is unnecessarily high, but I don't see it as the problem here.

You have side lighting here and some lens flare (stray light) and that is affecting the blacks in the image. Were you using a lens hood? The pic would be better if the lighting was more from the front. I know you can't always control that.

I was using a lens hood. Thanks for the feedback!