Folks,

I was surprised by some loss of detail in a photo that I took a couple of days ago. I think that I am looking at JPEG artifacts but would appreciate confirmation or other ideas. I normally shoot JPEG because for the vast majority of my photos, the JPEG compression doesn't cause my any pain. I think that it bit me this time, though.

The subject is a couple of bald cypress tree trunks so there is a ton of rapidly changing detail in the source material. I shot this with a Nikon Z 5 in Fine* mode. For those of you not familiar with Fine* mode, it is Nikon's Fine mode with the compression tuned for better detail instead of file size.

Nikon Z 5, Fine* mode
Tamron 150-600 VR G2 at 500mm, VR3 mode
F11
1/1600
ISO 4000

Thanks,
-- Art Z.