PHRubin Loc: Nashville TN USA

The images are processed which masks the camera performance to some degree and only seems to show partial EXIF data. I can see the sky is blown out, your lens is 70-300, not 50-300. The shutter speed is fast enough to minimize camera shake, but the images don't seem to be sharp. The images are cropped. I can't tell if you have the camera in RAW, JPG Fine, JPG low or in between.

boberic Loc: Quiet Corner, Connecticut. Ex long Islander

One question, as most things have been addressed above. WherE were you when you took the shots, as there is softness which may be caused by camera shake? If on land, support-tri or mono pod may help. If on a boat, faster shutter speed may be necessary, as boats are constaantly moving.

rusty66

I shoot a lot of racing sailboats. Before changing lenses I would suggest the following: Set ISO to 800. Aperture priority at f8, auto white balance, center weighted exposure, auto focus tracking, continuous high speed shutter release, back button focusing. ISO 800 and f8 will give you a depth of field with a worthwhile margin of error to have the main subject in focus and will yield a shutter speed typically between 1/1000 and 1/8000 sec. 1/1000 is the absolute minimum to deal with a moving subject, a moving photo boat and camera shake. Unfortunately f8 will not blur any distracting backgrounds but it is much more important to have your subject in focus regardless of the background. As you gain experience, you can experiment with lowering f stop slightly. Unless you are planning wall sized posters don't worry about ISO being above 100 or 200. Center weighted exposure will ensure that your exposure is not being overly influenced by white boats and white sails. By all means shoot in RAW so you can adjust whatever is necessary in post. Typical adjustments might include shadows, overall exposure, highlights, more blue in vibrance to accentuate water and sky, certainly sharpening and perhaps camera vivid. For composition, keep in mind that most viewers have seen pictures of sailboats. The attention grabbers are tight shots of PEOPLE in ACTION although a few overall shots including the top of the mast are good to set the stage You'll get the attention grabbing tight shots at mark roundings. Assuming you're a sailor, anticipate where the action will be and shoot in bursts of 4 or five. Your keeper ratio will go down but your absolute number of keepers will go up dramatically. Shooting bursts, 100 shots to yield 5 or ten keepers is a great success. Have a memory card with at least 32gb. Weather mark roundings yield the most action shots. Station yourself above the mark to get tight shots including eyeballs as the boats approach on starboard tack and then round. If there are spinnakers being used you can get some wider shots with spinnakers set and boats moving downwind after the mark rounding. Every set of regatta pictures should include the start. Be a little to windward of the pin end of the starting line and outside where the fleet will make its first tack to port. Shoot horizontal and include mast tops. You won't get any eyeballs from that location but you will get the typical starting shot with all sails drawing. Try a few shots from the committee boat end and you'll see what I mean. They are not typically as interesting as from the pin end. Shots form the leeward mark rank next in terms of typical interest. Be downwind of the mark but in range of your 300mm long end to get wide and tight shots. Finish line shots are usually boring. Get ahold of Sharon Green's and Onnne Van der Waal's books and look at their composition. The images are so beautiful that you may have my reaction and consider throwing your camera overboard. If you follow the above suggestions your images hopefully will be clearer and more interesting. If blur is still a problem, have your lens checked. After all the above if you are still motivated to get another lens, you might consider my Tamron 18-400mm. Sharp enough for me and I love the range to get tight action shots.

JCam Loc: MD Eastern Shore

Squirrel, I have been taking moving boat pictures for about 60 years when I bought my first good camera, a Voigtlander model Vito II. I don't remember the film number but the negatives were 2.25"x2.25"; after that camera was stolen, probably 1964, I replaced it with basically the same camera but in 35mm., then a Canon AE-1 with a telephoto lens that had a 200mm max focal length. For the past 12 years I've been using a Canon 60D with a Tamron f/3.5-5.6 70-300 lens .

AS has been mentioned before we really need to see a couple of the "problem" photos and the data to make good recommendations, but I suspect some of your problems are due to settings: Auto focus (which one?), shutter speed?, ISO?, and the light metering mode for starters. What settings are you using?

My favorite venues now are the Choptank and Tred Avon River Log Canoe races, and the Power Boat Races I haven't noticed the problems you mention.

Because I'm getting older and my hands are not as steady as they were, I always shoot with a higher speed than would be expected. I set a fixed shutter speed with a Min. of 1/500-800 (depending on conditions) for the canoes and around +/- 1/1200 for the power boats, but as sea conditions get worse, and I'm also doing more rock and rolling. I have no hesitation in pushing the SS up to 1000+ for the canoes and 1/1500-2000 for the Hydroplanes and Jersey skiffs. I'm looking for prints that are very sharp; if there is blur be it from "artistic", "subject" or "shooter motion", I consider it not good. When I stop the prop of a Jersey skiff in the air, that's great shot.

Since I fix the shutter speed, I let the camera pick the f/stop. ISO is usually limited to the 100 - 400 range. If it changes towards a dull , overcast day or the sun starts to set I may increase it, but generally races are finished or called long before the natural light needs ISO help. Focus points and metering: for 90% of my shooting I use the center spot selection for both. I don't want to waste time fussing with settings when there are pictures to be shot.

Jim

Almost Airborne


At the Windward Mark


Oldest #4 (1882) & #15 (1931)

rusty66

Jcam's images are beautiful! Hopefully between his ideas, mine, and all the others you can solve your issues and become more and more proud of your sailing shots. Once you implement a few ideas that make a dramatic change then you can do other experimentation that will fine tune things as you develop your own routine.

Fair winds

amfoto1 Loc: San Jose, Calif. USA

On closer inspection, three out of five of your images are "soft": #1, #2, #4. That could be due to a number of things. Because two images (#3 & #5) are reasonably sharp, I suspect it's something like your camera settings.

All were shot with T3i camera and 70-300mm lens (brand not recorded in the EXIF, so I'll take your word for it that it's a Sigma lens).

#1.... "soft". ISO 100, 1/500 shutter speed, f/8 aperture, zoom at 263mm. It's possible the image softness is due to camera shake blur. While 1/500 is fast enough for use while hand holding a shot standing on solid ground, it may not be if you were on another boat and there was a motor running. A faster shutter speed may have helped.

#2... "soft". ISO 200, 1/1600 shutter speed, f/5.6 aperture, zoom at 300mm. Here the shutter speed should be more than fast enough. I suspect your lens isn't very sharp "wide open". At least not at it's longest focal length.

#3... This image is sharp. ISO 100, 1/800 shutter speed, f/8 aperture, zoom at 149mm. Note that the lens is stopped down a little and being used in the middle of it's zoom range. Keep in mind that shorter focal lengths are also easier to hold steady, don't require as fast a shutter speed. In this case, 1/800 is plenty fast.

#4... "soft". ISO 320, 1/2000 shutter speed, f/5.6, 300mm shutter speed. Here the shutter speed is plenty fast, but the aperture is wide open again, while the zoom is at its maximum 300mm. This image is about the softest of the bunch... it almost looks like there is also atmospheric haze. I've seen similar from using a cheap filter on a lens. I can understand wanting to use a "protection" filter out on the water. Just be sure it's a very high quality, multi-coated filter (like a B+W XS-Pro or F-Pro). Also, do you use a lens hood?

#5... This image is the sharpest of the bunch. ISO 100, shutter speed 1/800, f/10 aperture, zoom at 100mm. Note that this shot uses the shortest zoom focal length and smallest aperture of the five examples you posted.

My conclusions are that your lens simply isn't at it's best wide open, especially at longer focal lengths. You may need to use a higher ISO to do so, but try to always use it stopped down at least to f/8 and preferably a little more.... especially when using focal lengths longer than 150mm. Also watch those shutter speeds and try to keep to 1/800 or faster when the deck is rockin' and motors are running.

You also should check that your hand holding technique is good. Don't use a tripod or a monopod on a boat with a motor running... the vibrations will transfer through the support to the camera and show up as shake blur in your images. Hand holding, done right, is better because your body actually helps insulate the camera and lens from and motor vibrations.

Does the lens have image stabilization? If not, that probably would help. Sigma's OS is good. And so is Canon's IS. I haven't used Tamron VC lenses, so can't say from experience but they are probably good, too.

Image stabilization can help with motor vibrations, wave slap and rocking motions, and the steadiness of your hand. It cannot help freeze subject movement, so sufficient shutter speeds are still necessary. It also cannot help with lens sharpness, of course.

If you wanted to upgrade your lens, the best bet for sharpest images would be Canon's EF 100-400mm "II" IS or EF 70-200mm f/4L IS (first or II version) or 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II or III. All those lenses use fluorite and are sharp enough to make your eyes bleed.

The Canon EF 70-300mm "L" IS and EF 300mm f/4L IS don't have fluorite, but both are very, very good too. The EF 400mm f/5.6L is very sharp without fluorite, too, but it lacks IS.

Canon's more affordable EF-S 250mm IS STM and EF 70-300mm IS USM are pretty darned good, too... though I can't say how they compare with your Sigma lens. Canon's cheapest tele-zoom EF 75-300mm "III" is terrible, very soft at 300mm even when stopped down. It's cheap, but should be avoided if at all possible.

Sigma and Tamron both are now making 100-400mm lenses, too, which I suspect are better than the Siggy 70-300 you're using. However, these lenses aren't as sharp as the Canon 100-400 II.

Finally, have you cleaned your image sensor lately? Believe it or not, that can make a noticeable difference in image sharpness, too. The T3i has automatic sensor self-cleaning, which vibrates to remove loose dust from the sensor and makes cleanings less frequently needed. But over time even self-cleaning sensors occasionally need a more proper cleaning. If the camera has never had a sensor cleaning, it will need a wet cleaning.... oil from mechanisms get on the sensor and only a wet cleaning will remove it. After a wet cleaning, I recommend gently polishing with a Sensor Pen to remove any residual haze from the cleaning fluid and to make the sensor more resistant to dust adhering again in the future.

Image "graininess" and "noise" are not caused by lenses. They are the result of using too high an ISO on a camera. However, the highest you used for any of the above was 320, which shouldn't be any problem with an 18MP T3i (I used two 7D for five years, which have an earlier version of that sensor... I used them up to 800 and 1600 with little trouble, even higher with extra noise reduction). You might try using a post-processing noise reduction, but if that's done to strongly it can make images appear "soft", with a lot of loss of fine detail. Something to watch is be careful of underexposure.... if you have to boost brightness in post-processing, it will amplify any noise in images. It's also usually best to work from RAW images, but that requires post-processing in a computer.

JCam Loc: MD Eastern Shore

Squirrel, One thing I forgot to mention. Are you pushing your telephoto to it's maximum length? Some of the less expensive telephoto lens (including my Tamron) seem to be a bit less than sharp fully extended; I always try not to zoom my 70-300 lens beyond the 250 point. I don't know your camera at all, but mine is a crop sensor camera so that still gives me an equivalent of 400mm. I'm willing to give up that last 50 mm for a sharper photo. The 'Windward Mark' and 'Airborne' photos were both shot at +/- 300 yards from our boat; the two canoes racing were on the far side of the river, about 3/4 Mile away, and were shot hand held from a yacht club dock.

Jim

Shutterbugsailer Loc: Staten Island NY (AKA Cincinnati by the Sea)

I really love that last photo. Good composition can make up for technical imperfection resulting from outdated equipment. Check out my thread, Late Summer Sunset Sailing Regatta. I used a Pentax k50 and a Sigma 18-300 lens; decent stuff, but hardly state of the art. They too, were a bit noisy due shooting a a high ISO. Nonetheless, viewers did like the color and composition.

Squirrel10 Loc: Virginia

Great feedback, thank you.