smokieblues Loc: Central Florida

I apologize for putting this in this section but I was hoping you BIF photog's would know the answer for me. If not I will have this put into the technical area.
I had the wonderful blessing of having this GBH fly very close to me yesterday and I was able to track him all the way down the canal as he flew. But when I got home and downloaded I was a bit depressed about the quality of the shots. I have put in a series of three in a row for you to see what I'm asking about. These are straight out of the camera with nothing done to them. Equipment used is a Canon 70D (new camera - still learning all it's little quirks) with a 100-400L IS. Hand held. Focal length is 120 at 1/1600 & f/5.6. ISO was set to auto but was working at 250. I did however forget to turn the IS off.
My question is this, did I have the f/stop wrong? Do you think they would have come out better with an f/stop of 7or 8? I have noticed that this lens works better in the f/7-8 range. Was the IS slowing down the focus? Or is this just the result of my very rusty panning abilities?

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martinfisherphoto Loc: Lake Placid Florida

No sure what the problem is. First photo the eye is a little soft, but the other two seem to be fine. IS will slow focusing down a tad, but didn't seem to hurt here. I normally shoot at F/5.6 or F/6.3 myself as I want the Most available light and shutter speed, combined with the Lowest possible ISO. If you up your aperture then you will suffer somewhere else in the exposure triangle. As long as the eye is in focus you did good. Where are you finding fault in these photos?? P.S remember you can't compare the results with your camera and lens to a Canon Mark III and a prime 600mm lens. The extra $10,000 buys you a Little more sharpness..

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

These images all look good. My experience was I got the best results from this model from f/8 to f/11 depending on the situation. You should continue to experiment until you find what works best. As said, these are good and maybe don't need more DOF.

Swamp-Cork Loc: Lanexa, Virginia

They look very good to me, smokieblues. When you double click on download and see such good details, I'd say you are doing just fine!

waltchilds Loc: Central Florida

These look good to me and as Martin stated the eye is a little soft, but in the last one I think it is better. Overall this is a nice shot and after processing should be a great shot.

FrodoBaggins Loc: Texas

I agree with all the other comments... Stopping down might help a little but this is a great image for that camera! Very well done!

birdpix Loc: South East Pennsylvania

My experience with that lens is that IS seems to slow focus acquisition down a little but doesn't seem to affect tracking once it is locked on. You should be using IS selection 2 for panning as that ignores the horizontal motion of the camera and only stabilizes it in the vertical axis. I also tend to shoot at f/8 for the extra DOF and I think that lens is a little sharper there.

At 120mm it appears that the GBH was quite close to you. I say this because it doesn't look like you've cropped at all. At that near distance, the relative motion of the bird in the frame is quite fast and that may have been the biggest factor. There appears to be a slight forward and upward motion of the head, consistent with the natural motion of this bird in flight, that was not frozen by the 1/1600 shutter speed. I regularly shoot at 1/2000 and up and still can see some subject motion. And I am not referring to wing tip blur but rather the same type of motion I see in you shot.

The truth is these are pretty good shots. You've kept them in the frame and It appears that you have focused on the body of the bird which should still give you sufficient DOF to keep the head/eye in focus. Depending on the print size and the viewing distance, these could be quite acceptable shots.

Keep practicing and have fun!

smokieblues Loc: Central Florida

Thank you so very much for taking the time to answer my question. It just seemed that this series was a little soft to me. I was getting better results believe it or not with this same lens and a T2i! I was hoping for a little better sharpness with this camera. But as I stated before this is a new camera for me and I'm still working out all the bells and whistles it has and I also haven't been out shooting BIF's for quite some time so I'm probably very rusty!
Again thank you very much for your time and encouragement. It means a lot!

smokieblues Loc: Central Florida

Thank you very much for your time and encouragement! I'll keep your suggestion in mind the next time I'm out. See if maybe that will help.

smokieblues Loc: Central Florida

Thank you so very much for your wonderful comments and taking the time to look.

smokieblues Loc: Central Florida

Thank you very much for the wonderful encouragement and comments. I will have to see what I can do with them. Thanks for taking the time to look!

smokieblues Loc: Central Florida

Thank you so very much! Maybe I'm just being my own worst critic but Ill have to try stepping down a bit and see what I can come up with.
Thanks!

smokieblues Loc: Central Florida

Yes this bird was quite close and these photos are straight out of the camera.
As dumb as this is going to sound it never dawned on me that the closer the bird the faster the movement therefore needing the faster shutter speed. I have no earthly idea why I didn't think about that.
THANK YOU for reminding me of something I should have remembered. But that is why I asked for help.
I will have to remember this when I go out this weekend.
It has been a very long while since I've been out for BIF's.

steffro1 Loc: Murrells Inlet, SC

These look pretty good to me especially the last two. I generally use f/6.3 to our the background. I also shoot at around ISO 1200 Aperature preferred to get very high shutter speed. My D800 is excellent on noise.
Tfs them!
Robert