On the one hand, "If you have to ask, you can't afford it."

On the other hand, if you DON'T ask, "What's the bottom line for [this specific outcome that I want]?" then you're probably going to get taken by sharks every now and then.

On the other hand (!), this photographer is not very ethical.

As a former lab guy, in charge of scanning several million images a year, back when film was still king, I second this sentiment.

I just think he's at the edge of capability of lens and camera and situation here. The subject is underexposed and too far away/too small in the frame.

Digital images are composed of picture elements (pixels) each of which is composed of or derived from data from *four* sensor sites. One sensor site is covered with a red filter, two are covered with green filters, and one is covered with a blue filter. The output from those four adjacent sites is summed in a computer to produce one output pixel with RGB values. The sensor itself is covered with an "anti-aliasing" filter (diffraction grating that softens the image). The anti aliasing filter ensures that some light from every part of an image falls on several sensor sites. This is why all digital images need sharpening.

When you enlarge an image to see or use just a small part of it, you see the inherent unsharpness in the process. If this were a film image exposed at ISO 800, you would see film grain.

If your brain could zoom, "biologically," you would see "graininess" or "noise" from the rods and cones in your eyes, too...

Use a longer lens, or get closer, or accept reality.

Two thumbs up for this reply, and your service, sir!

Yes! I never buy a lens without one, and will only take it off if there is visible evidence of vignetting when using another attachment. That's never been a problem with telephotos, but occasionally it is an issue with extreme wide angle lenses.

Have you had a lens hood punctured by a bullet???

Doesn't sound like Leno, but who cares. The first part of this is great.

We live in such a litigious soup of hyper-regulated nanny state restrictions these days... Unfortunately, most of it makes sense, BUT:

When you remove a potential to fail, you also remove an incentive to succeed!

RAW + JPEG is fine. It gives you a choice.

RAW records the ultimate potential from the sensor. I always use RAW for challenging images, to avoid blown exposure settings due to changing lighting conditions, or to record any subject where I need to squeeze the absolute maximum quality from a scene that I can print. If I have any doubts about my exposure, the brightness range of the scene, the color temperature of the light, or the need for wide latitude in post-processing, I'll shoot RAW.

JPEG is *in-camera* processing from RAW — what some of us industry veterans call "pre-processing" to distinguish it from spending time at a computer, processing from RAW. You can rely on the "out of box" manufacturer's default settings (which I don't recommend), or you can modify many image parameters through camera menu settings, and suit your own taste.

To use JPEG pre-processing workflow to its fullest, you must be able to pre-visualize the image and know *that* — and *how* — your camera settings will record that image. To be able to do that requires full-range testing of each camera control in isolation from the others, and a good bit of experimentation and experience based on knowledge recorded from that testing.

I shoot JPEGs with full manual control of the camera. I set ISO, shutter, aperture, and custom white balance, based on a histogram of a Delta-1 photographic gray card, or an ExpoDisc, or a PhotoVision One Shot Digital Calibration Target. Then I set all the submenu controls for sharpness, color tone, hue, contrast, curves, etc., as my tests and experience indicate may be appropriate for the scene.

This process works incredibly well in many instances where I can control the lighting and scene brightness range, or where I know the lighting and brightness range are relatively constant. In such situations, I seldom use RAW capture.

When photographing action, or nature, or in daylight, I'm going to use RAW or RAW + JPEG capture, and I may use one of the automatic modes if my subjects are of average reflectance.

You will notice that many photographers are rather religiously dogmatic about their need for, love of, and insistence upon RAW capture. It's great — I use it when appropriate, and I don't knock it. But it's just one more tool in the box. If I can record a useful image in JPEG mode, without post-processing, I certainly will. Often there is no reasonable justification for the additional time and effort needed to process a RAW image, even when I hedged my bets and recorded RAW + JPEG.

HUGE segments of the photo industry use only JPEG capture for their entire workflow. RAW zealots should know that we do it with extreme professional discipline and carefully-crafted technique and systems, not the "Set it on P and spray and pray" techniques that beginners often use.

Our pre-processing JPEG workflow disciplines stem from shooting slides and transparencies many years ago, when "what you create at the camera is all that can ever go into the slide mount" was the norm.

We learned to use color correction filters to adjust for the color of the light source. In today's JPEG capture world, we handle this with Custom White Balance from an exposure target, or by dialing up Kelvin Color Temperature settings on our cameras.

In the film days, we used hand-held light meters that were accurate to 1/6 of one f/stop. Today, we use the in-camera histogram and reference targets to set exposure (and to calibrate our cameras to our incident light meters).

In the film days, we used reflector boards, soft boxes, umbrellas, scrims, gobos, and diffusion panels to control lighting specularity, brightness range, ratios, and contrast, and we still do that today.

ALL THAT SAID, of course, there is a whole world of post-processing image manipulation that can be lived in by those who want more than a straight image capture from the camera. If you get a great straight image, much of that post-processing can be done from a JPEG. But if you want the most potential range for manipulation, it's there in the RAW file.

Tools in the toolbox...

Are you shooting full size/full resolution images? If not, do!

Are you shooting RAW and viewing JPEG previews of unadjusted images? If you're viewing UNADJUSTED JPEG previews, they will be soft! ALL RAW images require sharpening. The amount of sharpening required depends on the end use of the image — especially print size and resolution, if printing.

SOME camera manufacturers (Canon...) have software (such as DPP) that lets you view the image with its in-camera JPEG settings applied to the JPEG PREVIEW of the RAW image. Then you can adjust parameters from that point to get the image where you want it to be.

I bought lots of gray market Nikon equipment back in the 1980s/90s. It was always the same stuff we get here. I never had problems with any of it during the warranty period. I had a Nikon F3 body need service five years later, so the warranty was expired and the issue was moot. I paid a local repair shop $100 to fix the aperture activation lever linkage... a nylon cord had broken.

Is your level of risk tolerance sufficient to forego a US warranty? Is your time frame for repair under an international warranty relaxed enough to allow that? Will you have spares, or be willing to rent while a repair is made?

Only you can answer those questions.

One approach might be to buy a bellows unit for your digital camera, put a flat-field enlarging lens on it, and copy slides the way we used to back in the optical film imaging days. Backlight the slides with a light box with 93 CRI PHOTO CFL lamps, or daylight bounced off a white card. Use full manual exposure and custom white balance at the camera.

Before you buy a Wolverine, also look at the Epson Perfection V series scanners. They can scan slides, prints, negatives... Some of them are 6400 dpi, which means you can get images that will print to very large sizes with fine detail and resolution. The Epsons also can be had with Digital ICE, which removes dust from Ektachrome and Fujichrome and similar slide images. ICE is semi-effective with Kodachrome, if you scan the slides *upside down* and then *flop* the digital images in software. (Kodachrome slides have 3D ridges on the emulsion side that fool the ICE software/hardware, which is looking at an angle for "dust logs and boulders" sitting on the emulsion.)

B+W, Hoya, Tiffen...

Note that I would never use one when photographing backlit subjects, or any scenes with highly specular lighting sources in them. Clear glass or UV filters can add flare and reduce contrast in such instances.

I DO use a clear glass or UV filter attachment when at the beach, in a desert, or when photographing in dangerous environments around splashy chemicals, mud, or flying debris or athletes.

This is a good overview of how iPhoto files images...

Actually, iPhoto is a bit annoying to most people who are used to working with their files directly. It takes a bit of getting used to, but once understood, it makes sense.

I use iPhoto when I need to get still images into iMovie, but not for much else. As much as I dislike Adobe as a vendor, I prefer working in Adobe apps.

If you are really working on a MacPro, you have all the power you need to use any image editing and manipulation software you can find. I would strongly suggest becoming familiar with Adobe Lightroom. It is the most ubiquitous image editor around, and interfaces well with Photoshop, the most ubiquitous pixel editor around.

The usual workflow is to import batches of images into Lightroom for cataloging, color and brightness adjustments, rating and sorting, etc. From there, if you need retouching, masking, dodging, burning, text tools, and other pixel editing features, you can drop individual images into Photoshop, and when done, drop them back into Lightroom. Then Lightroom can be used to export images for use elsewhere (lab), print them to an attached printer, or post them to your web site or sharing service or storefront.

It is also possible that your memory card is corrupt, or does not mate with the reader properly. I've seen the "partial image with scrambled pixels" issue before, with JPEGs, and that was the case in several instances.

You might try a different memory card, or a different reader, if you have one, to see if that makes a difference.

Sounds like you have a good plan. If you can lock everything down except the birds, you'll have a better chance of getting really clean images.

I used to shoot film images of birds with a manual 135mm lens on a teleconverter, back in the early 1970s. The lens was cheap, the converter was cheaper, and I learned that I had to use exactly one aperture (f/5.6 on the lens; effectively f/11 with the converter), and that I had to use a tripod, 400-speed film, and an appropriate shutter speed.

I got quite decent results, so long as I had enough light and stuck to my formula. We had an elaborate feeder, with lots of room for lots of birds to perch, and an even more elaborate system for ejecting squirrels. (Feeding raw peanuts in the shell to squirrels on the ground below the bird feeder was a good working strategy, too.)

Excellent analysis! From the looks of this, I'd say the point of focus was off, ever-so-slightly — perhaps a few inches in front of the bird. f/8, or even f/11, would have worked better, by providing additional depth of field. Manual focus might have helped, too.

Getting a lot closer also would have helped. The bird is a tiny fraction of the original scene. Using more pixels to represent your subject is always preferable to using fewer...

Birding is hard work, though. The critters always seem so shy! Perhaps a visit to a bird feeder store is the answer here.