JimH123 Loc: Morgan Hill, CA

I borrowed one of those el cheapo supremo 800-1600mm zoom lenses that you can buy at ridiculously low prices, and gave it a try. I wasn't too impressed with the image and it sat in my computer for 4 years until I decided to look at it again. This was taken at 800mm using my full frame Sony A99 and shot at f8 and for that lens, f8 was the only choice. I tried 1600mm, but it was basically unusable.

As you can see, the image is rather soft and has no detail.

In the meantime, Adobe Photoshop has added the Sharpening Filter Shake Reduction, and I decided to give it a try. So image 2 was sent to DxO Photolab for noise reduction and then to Photoshop for some magic with Shake Reduction and a final touch with High Pass Sharpening. And here is the after version. (Both images are heavily cropped)

The before

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bwana Loc: Bergen, Alberta, Canada

Looks pretty darn nice to me!

bwa

JimH123 Loc: Morgan Hill, CA

Yes. It surprised me the nice looking image that was hiding inside the original.

CraigFair Loc: Santa Maria, CA.

That's an awesome job of Post Processing Jim H. I used to have one of those and could never come up with a solution like that.
Craig

JimH123 Loc: Morgan Hill, CA

Thank you Craig. Shake Reduction has only been part of Photoshop for a couple years now, and I'm sure they are still perfecting it. Very simple to use. And it can work wonders on some images.

I think part of the reason that there was shake in the first place was the construction of the lens. The lens was kind of sloppy in the middle and was prone to wiggling. The longer one zoomed out, the sloppier it got. This friend let me borrow it and give it a try. On terrestrial images, I found the contrast rather low. I don't remember the manufacturer of the lens.

I am attaching a picture of a shack or shed or whatever it is at a distance of about 1 mile. You can see that the lens is actually quite sharp. I used a full frame camera body for this image and cropped it a lot. It surprised me just how sharp it could be tweaked.

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Albuqshutterbug Loc: Albuquerque NM

Very sweet.
Jim

CraigFair Loc: Santa Maria, CA.

Is 'shake reduction' under 'filters'?
Craig

JimH123 Loc: Morgan Hill, CA

Yes, under filters and then under sharpen. It is the top item.

Some people like to make a new layer and set it as a smart object. I just create a new layer and give it a try. If I don't like the result, I can delete the layer, and redo if I want to. There are YouTube videos on using this tool.


Be aware that some images respond nicely to Shake Reduction. And some don't. If there is much noise, I treat it before I use shake reduction as I see some weird results as it plays with the noise,

Give it a try.


Another thing to learn is "High Pass Filtering". I like it better than the other sharping options.

bwana Loc: Bergen, Alberta, Canada

I've never tried the shake reduction BUT I use High Pass Filtering a lot and love it.

I also have Astra Image's plug-in package (http://www.phasespace.com.au) which has some great sharpening tools. I prefer their Wavelet sharpening to that in RegiStax.

bwa