lyndacast

I shot this kingfisher high in a tree. I shot it in RAW. I use a Nikon d7500 with a Tamron 100-400 mm lens. Settings were f/13; 1/1250; ISO 500. Shutter Priority. I had to crop it significantly. Pixel width was 2918 and pixel height was 2450.
I edited it in LR and then transferred it to my IPad.
I feel that it is quite pixelated and think it is because of cropping....and perhaps the reach on the lens is causing it, too.
How can I address this in future?

(Download)

Bayou

I don't see pixelization, but I do see a bit of chromatic aberation along the tree, and general oversharpening that might be interpreted as pixelization.

Ourspolair

Once you have cropped, try resizing the image using your pp software before making any other adjustments. This should resample the image and add some "smarts" to interpolate between the original pixels.
You then do your adjustments on the resized image.

robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

The crop and enlargement is so much that you might literally be seeing the individual pixels of your sensor.

Get closer either with "foot zoom" or a longer lens.
If you have a location where you can do it use a blind* or park and sit in your vehicle and wait for them to come closer.

*small popup blinds sold for hunters etc they fold up for carry and can be set up in minutes, (if windy they come with pegs to pin down the corners in soft soil) you can buy one of the "photo" blinds but they are expensive, the ones for hunters sold by Amazon, Walmart and many sporting goods outlets work just fine

sudamar Loc: Southern Indiana

It looks like a great shot to me....the way it is.

niteman3d Loc: South Central Pennsylvania, USA

The download looks fine to me... I'd be happy with a shot that good of the elusive Kingfisher around here. They never sit long enough for me to snag one, I hear them more than see them. Once in the download and I hit the magnifying glass I'm seeing what looks more like noise/artifacts than pixelation which is probably a product of not enough light and too much post-processing magnification or exposure adjustment, so I agree with faster/longer lens and closer proximity to subject as a cure if you're seeking perfection. But, it looks fine to me?

Fred Harwood Loc: Sheffield, Mass.

It might be noise and over-sharpening. Try adjusting the luminance settings with reduced sharpening.

UTMike Loc: South Jordan, UT

[quote=lyndacast]I shot this kingfisher high in a tree. I shot it in RAW. I use a Nikon d7500 with a Tamron 100-400 mm lens. Settings were f/13; 1/1250; ISO 500. Shutter Priority. I had to crop it significantly. Pixel width was 2918 and pixel height was 2450.
I edited it in LR and then transferred it to my IPad.
I feel that it is quite pixelated and think it is because of cropping....and perhaps the reach on the lens is causing it, too.
How can I address this in future?[/quote

Lynda, the attached is your jpeg run through Topaz Denoise and Topaz Sharpen. Also, I attempted to remove chromatic aberration in Lightroom. The results using these plug-ins would be much better if they were applied to your raw photo before cropping because the PP programs would have more pixels to work with.

(Download)

CindyHouk Loc: Nw MT

I was going to suggest exactly what UTMike did.

cameranut Loc: North Carolina

Ditto what Robert J said. Some of my best photos were taken while sitting in a truck with the front and back windows covered to keep wildlife from being able to see me. It also helps keep the lens rock steady.

kymarto Loc: Portland OR and Milan Italy

You can get Topaz Gigapixel, with which you can uprez without pixellation

User ID

Not seeing CA worthy of concern. No pixelation, just noise. I realize some would object to noise, just becuz it’s there, but given that the noise is just grainy with no blotchy colors, it’s not distracting me while I’m enjoying the photo as what it is, a wildlife scene.

R.G. Loc: Scotland

That's what noise can look like when you zoom in on it. It's really not bad considering it's a crop and you have to zoom in to notice anything. If it was pixelation it would be most noticeable along straight edges like the bird's beak. It's got nothing to do with your lens (apart from the fact that it would be less noticeable if it wasn't a crop).

The best thing you can do to avoid that is to lower your ISO. F/13 is probably higher than you need (especially with a crop sensor camera), and it would still be worth lowering your f-stop even if it meant getting some of the branches OOF. And for a bird that's not flying you could have lowered your shutter speed a bit.

Where PP is concerned you need to keep the sharpening away from the noise. If you have some way to make the sharpening edge-based, use it (the Masking slider in Lr or Ps ACR is one possibility).

david vt Loc: Vermont

As i read this thread, I was thinking along the lines of what RG suggested. I have no idea how far away you were, but assuming you were at the 400mm end of your lens, and based on “severely cropped” some distance from there, assuming longer distance. @f13 and 200 ft, you would have had about +/-17 ft DOF, which for a still bird seams much more than what you needed. Similarly, a still bird does likely does not need 1/1250. Between these two, if you could get about 2 - 2.5 stops down to get ISO closer to 100, it might make a difference. Getting all the way down to f5.6 would have still yielded a DOF of +/- 8 ft.


That said, nothing beats effectively closer, either distance or lens, so that you don’t have to crop so much, but you being where you were and the bird where it was, likely not an option (in the short run). A faster lens does not make sense to me as you were not at the wide end of your settings yet

That said, if you were out for BIF and just caught this one sitting in a tree and had to shoot quickly, i can see your settings about where they were, and to that I say “nice capture”.

There are many highly skilled “birders” on this forum. I interest to hear them “chirp” in.

OnDSnap Loc: NE New Jersey

Do this in increments, I.E. a little at a time to get to your goal.