MichaelStacy

For the three pictures, these are the settings. I think you mistook the 1600 for iso, whereas it was for shutter speed

1 iso 360, f8, 1/2000 28mm
2 iso 250, f8, 1/1600 300mm
3 iso 280, f8, 1/1600 135mm

Thank you for your thoughts
Michael

MichaelStacy

Thank you again, Linda for efforts :-)

Michael

mwsilvers Loc: Central New Jersey

I think part of the contusion is that some of the newer posters to this thread are adding their 2 cents without reading earlier posts or looking at the EXIF data attached to your images. They probably don't have an EXIF viewer installed in their browsers and didn't bother to download the pictures and look at the shooting information in their editing software. When you're flying blind you tend to guess.

gessman Loc: Colorado

This thread is a lot like what we used to call "shutting the barn door after the horse is out." I would suggest that you do some purposeful testing.

In general, you need to become more familiar with both your camera gear and yourself. On a good day, in consistent light, maybe overcast, anything but not bright sunlight, tack a target with fine lines, like a page from a magazine, to a fence a few feet away.

With your camera on a tripod and using a remote release so as to take your touching the camera out of the equation, take a series of shots, loosely filling the frame, so when you magnify the images you can tell if they are sharp enough for your use and at what aperture your lens is sharpest. Vary your aperture from wide open in one stop increments to about f/11 or f/16 which will then allow you, upon analysis, to determine your lens' sweet spot.

Repeat the process precisely, hand-holding the camera as you might normally shoot. Then analyze and compare the two sets of shots, shot by shot by aperture, to determine which you prefer for future shooting. If your handheld shots appear inferior in quality, you have a some useful answers.

When you have those answers you should be able to concentrate more on composition, like making sure water in your scenes is always level, and making improved decisions about what makes good subject matter from knowing what you and your camera can and cannot adequately capture.

MichaelStacy

Great suggestions - again, there is great input on this forum - lots of varied experience
Thank you again..

IDguy Loc: Idaho

There are free versions of the dehaze filter for the standalone version of Lightroom. I actually have two. One uses presets and the other a slider: https://cutthruthefog.wordpress.com/lightroom-6-dehaze/

Google the free preset ones.

IDguy Loc: Idaho

The software is much more effective than a CP for removing haze.

IDguy Loc: Idaho

Oh...you might need Lightroom 6 for the free dehaze filters: at least the slider one.

drklrd Loc: Cincinnati Ohio

Sorry I do not download any ones photos from here and expect all the data to be written due to my time spent as a tech in electronics. We captured all data in a written form so that the next person knew what they spoke of. Years of a good habit. At cursory glance I saw no data written on the pic shown. The screen I view all of this on actually showed no real noise. Also as usual a lot of answers that seemed to indicate they were guesses.
So how does one without a download view the data you said is there. I do a lot of editing and I never want to confuse a pic download with my original pics. So I never download another persons pics. I would hate to find out that I used someone else's stuff in one of my composite shots.

mwsilvers Loc: Central New Jersey

Most internet browsers have add-ins to increase the functionality of the browser. Many browsers have an EXIF viewer as one of those add-ins. I have one simply called EXIF Viewer that is built for Google Chrome. Usually the way they work is you right click on the photo and select the viewer from the list and voila, all the shooting information is right there. Sometimes, either purposely or inadvertently, people strip the EXIF information from their photos. Obviously in those circumstances the EXIF viewer doesn't really help.

Bobspez Loc: Southern NJ, USA

I don't see any noise. There's a limit on how sharp you can get distant objects with a 300mm lens. Past 150 yards you aren't going to get super sharp details.

drklrd Loc: Cincinnati Ohio

Sorry I do not do google other than their maps. I find google like FB gathers information from your computer and sells it to large companies and the information they gather is hacked by the criminal element. (reference the recent finds on google and FB that have been in the news as of late). I knew this accumulation of data was going on long before the news got ahold of it. (reference was from hackers I knew back in the early days of computers when we used actual phone modems. Just curios kids and young adults back then). Since we knew about it we sort of hobble our computers these days by trying to avoid google and places like FB.
As far as I know I do not have EXIF. I would like the OP could give us all of the data we need when asking for help in their opening question. then maybe we could answer the question without many pages of "what if's" being proposed. Like fixing a TV or radio. If you know all of the symptoms you know what's wrong and you can immediately replace the component or circuit card causing the problem.

mwsilvers Loc: Central New Jersey

Most of us have no issue getting it directly from the images which contains much more complete information on the the camera and lenses being used and all the shooting data then any poster is liable to include in their posts. I appreciate you security concerns, but it's unlikely that people will add most of that information separately to their posts when it is already available for anyone to see. And most of the time those with a problem have no clue what information to give us. You seem willing to look at the photographs but are not willing to read the data they contain? I find that confusing. You can also download the images to read the data, but that's more time consuming and you said you don't want to do that anyway. It looks like you're stuck if you're not willing to use the technology that's available.

MichaelStacy

Well, I put limited info with my initial post (~ f stop & shutter speed) - but adding ISO would at least provide the 'triangle' of exposure info (I guess it is called) to give an overview w/o having to go to the posted picture. We are all at different levels, which makes sense since this is a forum for info, etc. So, drkird has a good point and should ask the questions as he did.
imho

mwsilvers Loc: Central New Jersey

I have no problem with him asking the question. I posed a solution that would give him all the shooting information, but because he's very concerned about security he doesn't want to use it. The most important point I made is that the majority of people who come on to this site and ask technical questions are usually anywhere from somewhat to completely inexperienced. Many of them don't know that the shooting information is critical to analyzing a photograph and some of them don't even know how to find that information in order to give it to us. Therefore, expecting people to give us all the relevant shooting information when they ask for help with a problem is not realistic. But the information is there for those of us willing to look for it.