Toment Loc: FL, IL

Bryan Peterson has Exposure Solutions which has many answers as to how to capture in different situations. He covers depth of field quite nicely and succinctly, which would definitely help your Bay photos. Good Luck!

joer Loc: Colorado/Illinois

You can make minor improvements but your expectations are unrealistic for the distance and equipment being used.

twowindsbear

If ya want a 'up close & personal' image of something that small & that far away ya NEED a bigger lens & appropriate tripod. I'll suggest a 1000mm lens. Or an astronomical telescope in terestrial mode. Good luck. IMHO of course.

zigipha Loc: north nj

try an a/b comparison, on a tripod, with the 5dmkii and the t6s. shoot tree trunk that doesnt move.

the t6s with its crop factor gives you a 450ish equivalent. so you get more optical enlargement. depending on your limiting facor (weather/mist, optical purity of the lens, visible shake due to shutter speed, etc), its not clear which set up would be better

you could also have run into different weather conditions on the 5dmkii vs t6s days.

shooting the ships at infinity you might a well open the aperature to wide open. you get a faster shutter speed or lower iso to boot

Al Beatty Loc: Boise, Idaho

Hi MikeMcK,

You've gotten some great suggestions. Also, if you have access to the current version of LightRoom CC you might try the dehaze adjustment to see if it will do anything for you. Take care & ...

jeep_daddy Loc: Prescott AZ

Simply put, if the subject is the ships, they are much too far away for any lens to get detail. And, atmospherics are playing a part in how bad it looks too.

MikeMck Loc: Southern Maryland on the Bay

[quote=Al Beatty]Hi MikeMcK,

You've gotten some great suggestions.

Yes I have and thank you all so much for your help.

banjonut Loc: Southern Michigan

:thumbup:

brjomd Loc: Carlsbad, California

Once magnified, the "waves" half way into the photo are sharper than up close, or closer to the ship. This suggests you were using auto focus, or manual focusing too far from the subject of interest. Try using manual focus on the ship, and try using a tripod. I don't think the lens, or the camera are to blame.

amfoto1 Loc: San Jose, Calif. USA

If you are OCD about sharpness, that may be true.

For one thing, you are at infnity focus, which may not be the sharpest on a lot of lenses.

Also you are shooting through a half mile or more of sea air, which has all sorts of distorting effects. You could buy a $10,000 lens and put it on a rock solid tripod and still not get any better results, simply because you are way, way too far away from the subject.

If using a "protection filters" remove it.

An ultra-wide ranging 14X (or more) zoom such as an 18-250mm simply cannot be expected to be as sharp as a more modest 3X or 4X zoom. Ever noticed that the more "pro-oriented" , high-end, premium zooms are often only 2X, 3X, 4X... maybe 5X, at most? 16-35, 24-70, 100-400, 200-400.

There is a hell of a lot of stuff going on inside a 15X or 20X zoom, for it to be able to cover such an extreme range. It's rather silly to think it will be able to so it all perfectly. Heck, it's a modern miracle if it does some of it particularly well! There simply has to be some compromise, whenever you are trying to make optics do extreme things and still offer a reasonably priced product.

You buy an 18-250 for all-in-one convenience, certainly not for ultimate image quality!

An 24MP APS-C camera will never be as sharp as a 22MP full frame camera. The smaller sensor is more than twice as crowded with pixel sites, which are much smaller and more tightly packed.

In most cases an APS-C camera also will use a stronger anti-alias filter over the sensor, than a FF camera will. The AA filter deliberately blurs the image to reduce moiré effects. The AA filter is one of the reasons that images need to be sharpened in post-processing.

Comparing a crop sensor camera to a full frame camera, to arrive at the same size final image (say an 8x10 print), you are magnifying the smaller sensor image much more, so are therefore looking at it more critically. For example, that 8x10 is approx. an 8X enlargement when made from a FF camera... or a 13X enlargement when made with an APS-C model.

Lens calibration is another possibility. For that last little bit of focus precision, some of the higher end Canon camera models have a Micro Focus Adjustment feature, that allows the user to fine tune a particular lens on a particular camera. AFAIK, T6S doesn't have MFA, nor does any other Rebel/xxxD model. 70D, 7DII are the current APS-C models with MFA. If you can't micro adjust your own lens, you have to rely upon the factory settings, which really can only be "ballpark" calibrations... both on camera and lens. You might be able to get the lens professionally calibrated to the camera (if you really think it's worth the trouble). Lens and camera mechanisms wear and get out adjustment over time, too... so occasionally re-calibration may be needed.

"Protection" filters and dirty sensors are two more causes of "soft images".

But a lot of it just comes down to ridiculous expectations. Viewing a 24MP image at "100%" on most modern computer monitors is like making a five foot wide print and then viewing it from 18" away. Of course it looks like crap! Back off to a more realistic level of magnification... if you are making an 8x10 print, set a magnification in your software that renders approx that same 8x10 inch sixe onn your monitor, closer to the final image size you'll be using. This gives you much more realistic evaluation of image sharpness and focus accuracy. It's fine to zoom in to work on images, but some things should be done at more reasonable magnification levels.

There is massive over-emphasis on "sharpness" among photographers these days. I think it would be a good exercise for everyone to go make only soft image for a few days, to learn to appreciate that every shot doesn't need to be eye-bleeding sharp!

MikeMck Loc: Southern Maryland on the Bay

Thank you!

brjomd Loc: Carlsbad, California

Your points are all well thought out, correct, constructive, and well taken. However, the fact remains that the sharpest area in this photo is about half way in, suggesting a focusing issue.
I certainly agree that tack-sharp images are over rated, except in macro or industrial work. Our equipment may be able to achieve that, but we may not.
Enjoy your day.

Weddingguy Loc: British Columbia - Canada

Basically you have two problems. . . the first being unrealistic expectations from your lens and camera in it's ability to produce what you are hoping for. The second is slight camera movement causing you to lose some sharpness.
As for going to a smaller F/stop, I would guess that it would not help as you are at close to the best that lens can offer at F/8

Just my humble opinion . . . again

MikeMck Loc: Southern Maryland on the Bay

I think you are absolutely right. Thanks.

MikeMck Loc: Southern Maryland on the Bay

Thank you!