Next up for me is Raj’s lesson #5 – Sharpness. In case you have missed it, just go over and take a look. He has a wonderful way of explaining things and gives a lot of examples to help drive the lesson home.
Ooh, this was a hard one for me, Raj. I tend to make a quick pass through my photos and delete all of the blurry ones. Many of my photos are unsharp due to shutter speed, missed focus, and not having an appropriate aperture. I picked this photo as an example. I thought by using F9 that both birds should be in focus, but they are not. The one in the back is much “softer” than the one in the front. Is it because of my focal length? Is it because I focused on the bird in front? Should I have focused on the bird in the back? Does that matter?
- ISO 800, f9, 1/800 sec, 374mm
I hadn’t really had much experience shooting with my Sigma 150-600 C at higher f stops. But since reading through this lesson, I am happy to report that it works much better at the higher numbers F11 – F16 when there is more than one subject to focus on.
Thanks to everyone that contributed to this lesson and to Raj for making me delve a little further into this topic. So happy to have learned something new 🙂
shutterbugdiary 
Thanks Shutterbug for your contribution once again. Great to see that you are following up these sessions very seriously.
The image in question is not large in size and I can’t really make out the difference. I would focus on the closest bird as you have done here. The aperture f9 looks just about alright to me. At longer focus distance the dof gets deeper. I feel the main culprit here may be the shutter speed and the movement of the bird. Sometimes the birds make some high-speed moment. If you check carefully both the bird’s body in good sharpness.
This critique is part of XDrives Photography Learning Sessions. Thanks for being here Shutterbug.
Raj
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Thanks for your input Raj. Much appreciated 😊
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You’re welcome! 🙂
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My very next lens… Great post.
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The Sigma 150-600? It’s great! I just saw today that they have a 100-400. A little more lighter in weight, I think. Happy shopping 😊And thanks for stopping by
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Yes! I’ve been eyeing that lens for a while now. I’ve read lots of great reviews on it as I do lots of bird photos. Hope you’ll post more of your shots with it.
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That’s so awesome. I have a bit of an obsession with the birds. It’s quite addicting, isn’t it? And you can pretty much guarantee that any of my wildlife shots are done with that lens.
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Right now, we’ve got Egrets and Brown Pelicans just waiting to get photographed. I’ve shot with a 200-500 Nikon and was wowed by it. I believe that Sigma performs much better.
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