Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

Thanks! I'll pass it along.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

Thanks! I'll pass it along to the photographer - it was taken by my son, 19 yrs old at the time, while traveling/studying abroad in Chengdu, China.

JimH123 Loc: Morgan Hill, CA

You really cannot blame this on the camera. With a better lens, this image would have been sharper. But you need to consider that the focal length is just not long enough to do justice to the eagle. Besides being not sharp, there just are not enough pixels on the eagle to achieve sharpness.

Consider this blowup where I pushed it to the pixel level. Granted this is far beyond what anyone would choose to look at a picture, but this blowup tells you what you need to know. Look at how blurry the edges are on the beak. And I count only 18 pixels horizontally for the eye. And I just barely run out of fingers to count the total pixels on the pupil of the eye.

(Download)

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

Not sure if you've seen the two pictures my kid took using a D70s (6.1 mp) and the kit 18-70, F3.5-4.5. I posted these to show what can be done with older more modest, low mp gear. I don't think your image reveals any problems with the gear you used. I do think that shooting at slightly higher ISO, smaller aperture, turning on VR if it wasn't on, and NOT using AF-A - which lets the camera select the autofocus mode to use (AF-C or AF-S - depending on whether the camera sees a moving subject), should help. Typically for landscape, even manual focus, using the green focus confirmation light in the viewfinder to focus with should help. The blooming on the yellow beak at a very close crop seems to be something that happens when the camera is used hand-held, and the ability to lock onto the subject is compromised by a bit of camera movement. The halo is likely caused by the camera's AF system trying to reacquire focus. Either a tripod, or back button focus where you focus then release the back button to actually take the picture might help. I don't see any evidence of camera movement or lens aberrations, btw.

The focus distance reported in the metadata was 10.59m and the depth of field at 80mm and F4 was reported to be 9.36m - 12.20m so anything closer than or beyond that narrow sharp focus range will get progressively software as the distance increases.

I noticed that the image you posted is downsampled (or cropped) to 8.4 mp (4928x3264 px), so naturally it will not have the best detail.

Lastly, I'm guessing that you shot this as an in-camera jpeg, judging from your use of Windows Photo Editor. Shooting this as a raw file might give you a bit more leverage at revealing more detail and edge contrast in post processing.

But the choice to use such a short focal length to capture a difficult subject needs to be revisited. With the right lens your D7000 should be able to decidedly record a better image than my son's 16 yr old D70s. I am not sure you need to spend $2400 to see that improvement, but a 70-200mm F4 would be an excellent choice and a decent used one can be had for around $600 or less.

hrblaine

>but a 70-200mm F4 would be an excellent choice....

I agree, I love mine and use it a lot. Harry

uhaas2009

From the 7000 I changed to the 810. The first pics I took was a slow flying pelican not far from me, guess what the pics wasn’t sharp. I didn’t know that shutter speed was my error in this case. A lesson from Jason Odell about birding was one of my best investment.
From the 810 I learned my missing knowledge, light, composition I pay way attention to it, it’s a tool not a hustle, I dont feel for better camera or lenses.....

My choice would be the better camera and lesson

JimH123 Loc: Morgan Hill, CA

He doesn't need a new camera to achieve a sharper image. There is nothing wrong with the camera he has.

A longer lens so that the eagle appears larger in the image will help a lot -- if you can use good technique by learning how to achieve sharper images. I would go so far as to say that many who have contributed to this thread could take that same camera and lens and produce a much sharper image. But even in this case, a longer lens would have been better. And keep in mind also that it doesn't take a real expensive lens to produce a sharp image. Many older lenses can still take fabulous pictures provided that you use good settings and can hold the camera steady enough. I should know. I have many older lenses that I just love using, and yes, I can achieve very sharp images with them.

topcat Loc: Alameda, CA

Your camera is good and should give you good results. But when you are taking such a photo, your SS should be higher. Your F-stop should be smaller, and if you are not using a tripod, consider a monopod or a walking stick with a camera attachment.
The problems you are showing here would not be solved by better equipment, although a longer lens would certainly have helped a lot. 160 at f4 is not a recipe for success.
Just keep practicing, and when you get to the limits of your camera's quality, then you can get a better camera.
Of course, that doesn't stop a lot of people from getting new cameras, in the hope that this one will improve my photography. Often in vain.

redking44.2 Loc: Texas

The problem I see here is that your picture is not a picture of an eagle, it is a landscape featuring an eagle. As such, you can't expect the eagle to be a high-resolution image. To make that eagle something like high-res, you would need (rough guess) 100 times as many pixels. 10x horizontally and 10x vertically - 100x. You can work out exactly how many by checking the pixels in your eagle with another similar-size picture you consider to be sharp enough.

Unless you only want a modest improvement, like 2x (needing 4x the pixels), this is impractical. What you need is to decide if you are taking landscape or wildlife pictures. If landscape, you're fine, but if you want wildlife, you need a longer lens or getting closer. Or both. I do not see any camera available to the general public solving your problem. Perhaps NASA could help?