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.

Even the very best filters are additional glass that light must traverse on its way to the sensor. If there are any imperfections in them, they detract from the purity of the image. At the very least, they introduce additional potential for flare, as light bounces off the surface of the lens, back onto the back of the filter, then back through the lens.

Most of the time, filters do not harm the image significantly. UV filters are great for reducing haze in distant landscape scenes. They also protect front lens elements during handling, or in adverse conditions such as photographing motocross racing on a muddy track.

But in the case of photographing backlit or side-lit subjects in daylight, or other high brightness, high intensity, or high specularity circumstances, they can add a significant amount of flare to an image, or reduce overall contrast.

Remember, in digital imaging, sharpness is created by establishing crisp tonal boundaries — the contrast where one edge transitions to another. Anything that detracts from that affects perceived sharpness.

While there are many good answers here, it's impossible to tell which ones might help you, without seeing sample images!

I have a very long list of things to check on my "what went wrong" list for "fuzzy photos taken with telephoto lenses." Most of them don't have anything to do with the lens itself, but relate to user errors. Here are just a few:

Don't use vibration reduction or image stabilization when using a tripod.

Do use a tripod or a monopod when using a long lens.

Use the highest resolution and the lowest JPEG compression, and/or the largest RAW file size.

Be sure the lens is clean — both front and rear elements.

Avoid filters unless you need them. They reduce sharpness just a smidge.

Use a lens hood to avoid as much flare as possible.

Use 1/focal length of the lens as the lowest shutter speed when hand-holding. (IS or VR can improve this by one or two stops, depending on the situation — and how much caffeine you've had!)

Limit your caffeine intake before photography!

Use manual focus when you can, to avoid AF shifts and errors.

Stop down two or three stops from wide open. Most lenses are sharpest there. You avoid coma, astigmatism, chromatic aberrations, and diffraction limiting of sharpness by working in a "sweet spot" aperture. Adjust ISO and shutter to compensate/achieve correct exposure.

If your camera body allows, make micro-focus adjustments for the lens you are using. If not, take body and lens to a service center and have this adjusted for you.

If you are cropping images in software, use the software's appropriate settings for achieving best quality. These vary from application to application; check your manual or help screens. Consider using a software tool made for re-sizing.

Lots of folks immediately jump to conclusions about lens quality, rather than trying to trace real problems with techniques. Know that long lenses have extremely shallow depth of field, especially up close, and that long zooms are best at some focal lengths and worse at others. Stop down some... Read any test reports available for your lens.

One of my favorite lenses of all time was a Vivitar 135mm f/2.8 lens for Nikon. I paid $55 for it in 1975. It was tack sharp, used wide open.

Any time I get a new piece of equipment, I run my own tests with it to determine whether it meets my needs. This also serves to help me understand its limitations, and my limitations in working with it.

iPhoto DOES handle RAW images, to the extent that Mac OSX has been enabled (updated) to read them.

If you have a very recently released digital camera, Apple may not yet have RAW image interpretation built into the operating system for that model.

Apple usually updates their RAW camera capability quarterly or so.

This is similar to Adobe's Camera RAW interpreter... They periodically update it in the same manner.

Two thumbs up. Use it on APS-C or DX only.

Stop Bath was aptly named. It smelled soooo bad!

I mostly agree with your fair use comments, and the waters surrounding copyright are certainly murky.

The stories closest to the event in the video were sensitive, did reference fund raising efforts for the victim's charity, etc. However, some more distant outlets carrying the story did not do more than sensationalize.

Our own local TV stations in the NC Piedmont Triad occasionally pick up distant stories for shock value or a "ratings grab"... The headlines are often more enticing than the stories are interesting. Yet they hook viewers into sitting through that block or two of commercials just to watch 90 seconds of letdown.

Your building example is fine... fair use if it's background for a story, or there's a story about the company.

I was a member of PMAI for many years, and we dealt with copyright issues all the time. My former company provided CD-ROMs of student images to their parents/guardians (only), complete with a full copyright release, for a price. Those customers with CDs could get them printed anywhere, because the PDF of the official release letter was on the disc.

However, there are plenty of "professional" photographers who are not too savvy when it comes to pricing, copyrights, contractual use licensing, fair use... They DO give the rest of us fits! I can't stand vulture-like high pricing any more than I can stand no or ridiculously low pricing. A gift is one thing, but good work has SOME value!

If you're slammed with business, you aren't charging enough. If the phone never rings, and your promotion is good, you charge too much.

If you are a pro reading this series of threads, do consider these issues. Think about the worth of your work in several various and different circumstances. Think about how you would charge for "carriage trade" portraits, and what the justification would be... what the price includes! Think about how you would handle a memorial image, and the public message that might send.

It's one thing to have and protect a reputation for great work that commands high prices. It's another to be an ass about it.

The 50mm focal length is better for portraits — It yields a flatter face (more foreshortening). It also provides less depth of field at a given distance and aperture, so it will give you better separation of a sharp subject from an out-of-focus background.

The 35mm, used on DX, provides about same "normal" *angle of view* (crop) as the 50 does on FX. It may be better as an all-around choice.

Only your general needs, habits, and subject choices can guide you most properly here.

I tend to agree... He just does not get the emotional side of this situation, and how best to respond to it for good public relations. If it had been me, I'd have let it go, or quietly negotiated with the news outlets who used the image. To a media outlet, threats of lawsuits are just great front page news stories!

OTOH, the general public does not understand copyright laws in the USA. This photographer does have a legitimate beef with the media for exploiting his image. The family does have a blind spot in not understanding how the photographer and the news media exploited THEM in their time of loss.

All creative works are protected under US copyright laws. When a professional photographer creates an image, he sells a COPY of it for a SPECIFIC fee for a SPECIFIC use case. If the use case changes, the fee changes! The fee for surrendering full ownership and copyright of an original image can be quite high.

By analogy, an advertiser buying use rights to a popular song for their TV commercials will pay a small fortune. Microsoft paid the Rolling Stones $3,000,000.00 to use "Start Me Up" in their Windows 95 commercials 20 years ago!

The fee was negotiated, based on a guestimate of how much the company would earn by attracting attention to its product or service. We all know how it turned out for MS — The energy in that song helped to sell lots of crappy software!

So it goes with imagery. An artist designing a logo for a company might charge $100,000 for a couple of weeks' work (NeXT logo for Steve Jobs). Others (such as BP and Accenture) might pay hundreds of millions for a logo, or $35 (Nike), or $0 (original CocaCola and Google logos).

It's what you negotiate! Transacted value is simply an agreed-upon perception of something's worth TO YOU. It has both a scope and a cost.

Know what rights you are purchasing when you "buy" or "license" any creative work. If there is a copyright restriction, you don't OWN the work, you have a specific use-case license.

The laws that back this up were designed to provide market incentives to creators of intellectual property. Without them, it is doubtful there would be much incentive to create great works.

We live in a difficult and confusing environment, legally. If you use social media, be sure the media company isn't "legally stealing" your creative work by getting you to accept an End User License Agreement to use their site or software. Instagram and others assume copyrights to the work YOU post there, in exchange for your use of their systems.

Cap the terminals of Lithium batteries to prevent shorts! Store in a separate container in your bag or case.

Introversion - Extroversion is a continuum, and is influenced heavily by other personality attributes and intelligence.

Thanks! Your extensions here make a lot of sense.

I spent 33 years in the school portrait industry. Whenever any of our customers lost a child, and we found out about it, we would print memorial packages of that child and ship them directly to the parents, at no charge, with no questions asked. If they wanted to use the images in the news, we didn't care! If they wanted the digital image, they had it on CD, as well.

Nothing is more sacred than the memory of a deceased child.

Great post! What prompted it? I'm sure there's a great story behind it!

I'm definitely an introvert, and can say whole-heartedly that I've experienced the prejudice of every one of the myths, and I resemble every one of the realities.

HUGE numbers of smart, creative people are introverts. Extroverts can usually appreciate what we do, but often fail to understand how we are not like them. We can intimidate them, threaten them, confuse them, and piss them off, without trying — or even knowing — that we do.

Accordingly, when working around extroverts, I've learned to try to start from their point of view (needs, motivations, circumstances) and take them to where I am, step by step, if I see a need for them to do something differently. It's called consultative sales, and it is a process well-suited to introverts.

Different TYPES of batteries have different use and storage requirements.

Rechargeable Battery Health:

Sooner or later, these devices will fail. But did you know that how you use them is the largest single determinant of how long they last? Here are some tips on using them correctly, so you maximize both run time, and battery life cycles and years.

1) Use them! No rechargeable battery will last long if it is not cycled frequently. The more often you use it, the more charge cycles you will get from it. Most rechargeables will last 500 to 1000 charge cycles, or five years, with proper care. However, they all lose their capacity, gradually, over time. You may need to buy spares to make up for lost capacity. Label every battery with the date it went into service, so you can have an idea of when to replace them.

2) Watch the temperature. Rechargeable batteries last longer when they are stored and used between about 60°F and 80°F. In other words, do not leave rechargeable batteries in a car for any length of time (> an hour or so in hot or cold weather).

Avoid excessive heat by not storing them in a car in the hot sun. Just a few hours at 120°F (car parked in sun, windows rolled up) can rupture their seals and cause them to fail. On a hot summer day, put them in a small cooler with a "synthetic ice block" (not water ice). Keep the cooler in the darkest part of your vehicle.

Avoid freezing rechargeable batteries by not storing them in a car in Winter, even for a few hours. Freezing ruins them!

Remember that cold weather will reduce rechargeable battery output. If your flash gives you 200 exposures at 75°F, it may only give you 100 exposures at 50°F. The same goes for your camera battery... If you know you will be working outdoors in cold weather for an extended period of time, bring three times as many batteries as you would normally use, and store them in inside pockets of a coat or vest, so they stay warm.

3) Know your batteries' chemistries. Your device manual will tell you what type of battery can be used in it. The four most common battery types should be used (charged, discharged, and stored) in very different ways:

Sealed Lead Acid (SLA) batteries (in some Quantum Power Packs) should be used hard, and should be recharged fully, immediately after use. Store them with a full charge, top them off before use, and use them often. If stored, they must be recharged every other month to avoid deterioration.

Nickel Cadmium (NiCd or Nicad) batteries (in many flash units, and in many other devices) should be used hard, until they are almost dead, and then recharged fully. They should be fully discharged and (only) then fully recharged, at least every 60 days, when stored.

While modern Nicads often are sold with the claim that they are "memory free," this just means they're much better than they used to be in that regard. NiCad batteries still tend to "remember" the least amount of work they were ever asked to do before a recharge, and then never do more than that again. So, avoid just firing off a few flashes, and then "topping them off," as that will cause them to develop the dreaded "memory effect." Always store them in a fully-charged state, and try to fully discharge them before recharging them.

Nickel Metal Hydride (NiMh) batteries (in some laptops, flash units, and many other devices, including hybrid automobiles) should be used fairly hard, and recharged just before use. However, these batteries do not tend to have a memory unless they are used infrequently. They work best in daily use. If you store them for a long period of time, charge them a day before use, then discharge them fully and charge them again, to restore full capacity.

NiMh size AA batteries are the best power source for use in small, shoe-mount portable flash units, because of their capacity and lack of memory.

Lithium Ion batteries (in cell phones, cameras, some laptops) thrive on hard use. Avoid discharging them completely each time, however. They can be topped off any time, and should NOT be stored in a fully charged state; 50% is good. Discharge a Lithium Ion battery about half way before storing it for several weeks. Then recharge it fully before use.

Many computers (and cell phones) have battery monitor circuits in them. These must be "re-calibrated" every other month or so to maintain their accuracy. To do this, you run the device until it goes to sleep, then fully recharge the battery. This resets the battery monitor so it tells you — with greater accuracy — how long the device can be used until the battery is exhausted.

4) Know battery safety! All batteries contain potentially hazardous chemicals. If shorted, most types of battery can overheat and start a fire, or even explode. Most Lithium Ion batteries are highly flammable. They will burn if they are punctured, driven over, (!) or if they are otherwise crushed or shorted. Never throw them into a fire or shoot them with bullets, because they may explode with deadly force.

If any battery pack swells, gets too hot to touch, smokes, or otherwise acts peculiar, turn off the device, remove the battery if you can, and place the battery or device away from flammable materials.

5) Recycle used batteries! All of the batteries mentioned here are hazardous if placed in landfills. Lead, Nickel, Cadmium, Lithium, and most of the other chemicals in these batteries are all hazardous to water tables and are poisonous to plants and animals. They also are recyclable with much less energy than it takes to mine and process new raw materials. So consult your local vendors of electronics to learn where you can recycle spent batteries.

Hints for great product photography:

Use soft light sources — large umbrellas and/or soft boxes. If you need to add highlights, use small, harder light sources with the same type of lamp.

Use continuous light, so you can see (pre-visualize) the final result. CFLs are available from Westcott or Alzo in "daylight" quality. LED lights are also available for video and still photography, but expensive. Quartz halogen lamps work well, but are hot and waste energy.

All of your light *sources* (the lamps, not the light modifiers) should be of the same type and age.

Have a good supply of reflector cards or panels in white, gold, and silver on hand.

Don't forget to use back lighting and rim lighting to add form and dimension to the scenes.

For smaller products, consider "tent" lighting to diffuse reflections from metal and glass.

Use manual exposure, custom white balance, and manual focus.

Use a sturdy tripod, so you can shoot at slow shutter speeds without motion blur. Use the self timer feature to avoid shaking the camera.

Use a "sweet spot" aperture on the lens. It's usually two to three stops closed down from wide open. Limit the depth of the scene (depth of field required) to allow use of a "sweet spot" aperture, if possible.

Avoid using TOO SMALL an aperture, which introduces "soft focus" by diffraction limiting of sharpness. The smaller the sensor on your camera, the wider the aperture at which diffraction limiting begins. If you intend to do tons and tons of product photography, invest in a camera with a full frame (24x36mm) sensor, and a good macro lens.

To test for diffraction, photograph a newspaper from about three feet, using every aperture on the lens, and appropriate ISO and shutter speeds to keep the exposure consistent. You will probably notice some softness at the smallest apertures. For instance, on my f/2.8 macro lens, the best apertures are around f/5.6 through f/8. But at f/11, I start to see diffraction, and at f/32, it's absolutely horrible!

Depth of Field calculator apps are available for Mac, Windows, and iOS devices, and probably Android, too. Get one and set it up properly for your camera format, lens, and exposure conditions. It will tell you where to focus, plus how much is in focus in front of the subject (1/3 of the depth of field) and behind the subject (2/3 of the depth of field).

I would scour the web sites of photographic lighting companies for clues. Their online catalogs are sources of gear as well as inspiration and insight.

Also search for anything by the late Dean Collins, a 1980s lighting guru who taught me well. His wisdom endures. His TinkerTubes (self-made PVC lighting instruments) are legendary.