The roof is not offending anything. The image is not in focus because I misfocused.

Bob the sad thing is that I thought that was what I had done. Cannot fix it now but trying to decide what would help avoid that problem in the future.

The taller tripod has been moved to the front burner. I am on SS so one of the expensive tripods with ball head will remain a dream but I can get a moderately priced taller one.

I may be fighting a losing battle. Cataracts, glasses, bright sunshine, etc. Seems like swimming upstream. lol

Yes I could have gone with a higher f stop. In retrospect I was at 1/160sec shutter speed and f11. I should have gone with f16 or possibly f22 and a slower shutter speed since I was on a tri pod. I did not because I wanted the truck to be in focus and would not have minded if the building and trees went a little soft. Hind sight and all that. lol

Photo added.

I could not take a pic and then view it since I could not see the screen. Moving the camera to view the pic would change focus so that was not an option.

I dearly mess the split screen Fresnel lens in my old, old Pentax.

The other day I took several pictures of the fire trucks used by a local RFD. I gave the shoot a lot pf thought regarding best shutter speed, aperture, ISO, etc. I am fairly new at serious photography and wanted to do it all right. Despite my best efforts I blew it.

Instead of focusing on the truck my spot focus actually focused on the roof edge behind the truck. The good thing is that I was consistent and missed focus on all four trucks. Sigh!

I thought that I had the focus point on the truck. Thinking back over the situation I think my problem may have been parallax. My tri pod does not bring the camera up to eye level so I was bent over, the sun was bright and I probably rushed.

I even tried to use Live View but the sun was much too bright to even see the screen much less use it to focus.

I have considered the hoods and believe that they may help but I know nothing about them.

So what do you do in this situation?

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I would ask yourself if you have explored and mastered all this camera has to offer. If you know the how and why of aperture, shutter, f stop, ISO, etc. or at least as much of that as you can learn with the existing camera then move up. If you do not understand the basic mechanics of photography then you will soon find yourself in over your head with a new, bigger and better camera. Not only that you may not have the skills to make a rational decision regarding which camera to choose.

I took three images one right after the other. What else can you do that is in camera?

I truly miss the split Fresnel focusing of my old Pentax. I put photography down after I got out of the USAF and have picked it up again at 74.

I have problems with my vision so I rely on Auto Focus but it seems I am even unable to use that correctly. sigh . .

I tried mid range on the lens. Not ether end of the focal range. Used a tripod. Used an electronic shutter release. Used a low ISO. Used a shutter speed five times faster than my aperture.

Then I go and focus on the wrong point.

Well. Thanks again for your help. Now I need a plan to make the best image that I can with the software tools that I have available. LR 5 and PSE 14.

I think we may be zeroing in on the problem and it seems to be more than one thing.

I have attached another image showing the focus point. The sun was too bright for me to see the screen even though I tried to use Live View to focus. As a result, the focus point seems to be the leading edge of the roof which probably left the side of the truck just slightly in front of the depth of view range and thus out of focus.

I do not see where there is a mention of IS on in the meta data but it would not surprise me if it was.

It is frustrating. I used to take pretty good images of the Thunderbirds using a 400mm lens on a rifle stock I modified to hold the camera and lens. Now, there are sooooo many things to take into consideration I never seem to manage them all even though I had days to set this up and even made notes.

Focus points

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Thanks for your time and thoughts. Your comment on shutter speed made me think. I went back and looked and I had used the 18-55 IS kit lens rather than the longer tele as I originally stated.

Shouldn't a shutter speed of 1/160 second have been fast enough to avoid camera shake especially since I was using a tripod?

I have to make the best of what I have since the sun angle has changed and it took two men over an hour to jockey fire trucks so I doubt they would want to redo it.

The stacked image is slightly lighter which makes sense when you consider the process. I'm betting you could probably limit that if you masked the gray fire house and only applied the process to that section.

I guess I just zoom in too far and I see what looks to be noise. I see the wildlife images some people post with razor sharp eyes and drool onto my keyboard.

Here is the original and the one after applying the noise reduction process you posted. Thanks. It works in PSE just fine and I believe there is an noticeable improvement.

My next project is to see what I can do about the blue coloration in the face of the building.

Thanks for the suggestions.

Original image full size

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This is the image after stacking

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I tried to upload them at the original size but all my computer seemed to be doing was grinding away and I finally gave up and used much smaller images.

The jpgs posted are low res so that they would upload in a reasonable amount of time. The originals are raw.