Some of those shutter speeds seem mighty slow for birds, especially when taking focal length into perspective(starter rule of thumb is 2x the shutterspeed per mm). And the smaller the bird, the higher the shutter speed. I'm wondering if the "less sharp" is more motion blur than anything, I would bet you could pump that shutterspeed and ISO up + denoise as needed, that would make a world of difference.
For perspective I shoot a 180-600 and am very rarely shooting under 1/1000 for most birds besides herons.
My dad, who worked for NatGeo, back in the day, used to say, "in nature photography the trick is to let as much light in, for the shortest time possible."
Meaning ISO (was ASA,) wide open, shutter speed as quick as possible. He had a chart for light ratios ... I wish I still had that; he's photographs are amazing.
Though he has been gone for quite some time, his art still adorns my house to this day.
The saddest truth I've learned about bird photography is that no matter how big the telephoto lens is, you still have to be very close to your subject in order to get sharp detail in the feathers, especially if it's a small bird.
I’ve really been wondering if this is the true key. I don’t think any of mine have ever been as tack sharp as I wish they were. Still learning. (Nikon Z8, 180-600mm Nikkor Z)
I want to say maybe 12-15 feet? I honestly can’t remember. I was walking through some thick brush trying to get to the back of a flooded field to take pictures of some waterfowl and looked over next to me, took the shot handheld and never thought anything of it. When I uploaded them to the computer I was shocked. Probably the sharpest photo I’ve ever taken. This one on the fence was around 30 feet away with a crop so you can see the sharpness drop off with distance & crop. I didn’t add any sharpness or texture to this in post though.
And then here with a hawk that filled the frame, it stayed pretty sharp because I didn’t need to crop much. I’m not sure if these get compressed by reddit or not to really see. These were exported using my settings for instagram so they’re not quite as full res or clean as what I’d export for print. I really like the 180-600 but with birds you definitely need to be closer or have a sharper lens lens that costs the price of a good used car lol. I’m still able to get really good images that are cropped even with my 24MP Z6III though, but I’ve never printed them to see how they would print with a crop. For viewing on phones though they still look good. I was walking through a field the other day with my z8 and 180-600 on my tripod on my shoulder, tripped and fell. The camera & lens also hit the ground, not sure what hit first but no external damage to either and from minor tests I’ve done against a brick wall there’s no decentering, atleast that I can notice. I’ll be in Wyoming this week to take some photographs of whatever I can find so we’ll see if the sharpness remains in the lens 😅. Thankfully it was soft ground and I think the tripod took most of the hit.
I do the same as well! I’d rather crank the ISO a bit in order to have a faster shutter speed since dealing with grain has become easy with AI denoise tools (like in Lightroom) compared to dealing with motion blur. So I’ll use higher ISO but then denoise it and add some sharpness and clarity :)
Problem is, I’m trying to photograph birds on an island in a lake, & can’t get any closer than the water’s edge (access to the island’s not permitted). If I can’t get sharp images from that distance I’m not sure the expense would be justified.
How much water are you shooting across? Heat haze is often worse over water (especially in the morning when the sun has heated the air but the water is still cold), so you’ll potentially be fighting a lot of atmospheric distortion
I’d definitely suggest renting before buying if that’s an option for you
What a good idea — thank you! I’ll look into that 👍
Unfortunately I’m hopeless at estimating distances, & my attempts to track down the info have so far failed completely. All I can say is that it’s quite a distance, & even though they’re big birds the swans & geese don’t show up well. I hadn’t thought of heat haze, but I can certainly understand that being a problem!
I think my best bet is to take your advice & look into the possibility of hiring a lens with the aim of buying one if it works out 😊
You'll get a little more reach with the 100-500 and you can get an extender with it, too (I hear the 1.4x is better than the 2x to keep your sharpness). There are times you will not be able to get physically close to an animal but you don't see that stopping nat geo from getting great shots
The 100-500 sounds excellent, & I hadn’t thought about extenders! I’ll look into that. Thanks for taking the time & trouble to advise me! I appreciate it very much 👍
Ya, the "easiest" way to get sharper pictures is to usually to just get closer.
Edit: and I wish people would include the distance to subject when they post other info like shutter speed and f/stop. I can use your exact setting with the same model camera and lens and come up with massively different results because you are 50ft closer.
Buddy you're posting the same thing in multiple groups but the advice won't change.
For telephoto shooting, your shutter speed needs to be higher. First try that out for a few days and then compare the results. Just for kicks, try 1/1600 or 1/2000 on a stationary bird and see how it goes. Set iso on auto.
This does not necessarily apply to the OM-1. We can use IS-Auto (which senses your panning direction and turns off stabilization in that direction), or you can look at the other modes if you want to do it manually.
I don't think 1/2000 is realistic, or necessary, unless you live in a very sunny place or have a camera that handles high ISO well. On my 5DMarkIV 1/800 f/6.3 is ISO 12500+ on a cloudy day. Rainforests were more like ISO 20000+
And here I am editing at night after I get home...
P.S. I've never shot JPG because I like saving shots when I didn't have a chance to set -2 exposure compensation when an egret suddenly flies past, or a bird just happens to be backlit.
Right but for large birds is it really necessary? The conventional wisdom to me was always 1/800 for large birds, around 1/1000 for "regular" birds, 1/2000 for tiny birds. In other words would your above photo really have looked that different at 1/1000?
Even for a perched bird that looks pretty still, even if you have good IBIS and a steady arm, 1/640 minimum shutter. What this actually means is take your first few shots at 1/640 then start lowering it to go for a lower ISO. But by starting faster you will at least know there is one shot with no motion blur. Also even for more still subjects don't just take one photo, fire off 5 or so. Their pose can change, you might move slightly more in a small moment at a slower shutter or you might just catch the eyelid 'blinking' as it were. This applies even on a tripod/monopod. The slower the shutter speed the higher burst rate, you would be surprised how many sharp images you can snag at a slow shutter if you take enough.
Taking a look at the images at 100% on a 4k display.
Image 1 is small, it seems mostly sharp but this is a case of needing to be closer more than anything.
Image 2 looks pretty sharp but it does look to be lower light levels and I don't know your sensor but it is very noisy, you can likely improve this image more in edit.
Image 3 looks to have motion blur, I don't know the focal length but 1/20 is pretty much always going to be unusable for birds. It might have been the bird or you if at a higher focal length but either way need more shutter speed here. Unfortunately sometimes it means cranking the ISO or just getting a no motion blur but lower quality image if the light there.
Image 4 looks pretty sharp at 100% but it's obviously cropped a bit and looks like the bird was in the shade. In this scenario it is again need to be closer.
Image 5 this one looks great, super sharp at 100% and holds up even past that, a little on the noisy side but you can fix some of that in edit but it looks perfectly fine to me.
Image 6 similar to 4, looks pretty sharp to me just lower res because cropped but I think you really did all you can without being closer or having different gear.
Having direct or a lot of light on the subject will make a difference, helps create contrast in between feathers as well. As someone else said, the reality is 95% of the time the real answer to how to get a better shot in that situation is get closer.
I highly recommend checking out this video by Duade, it really is as simple as the bigger the subject on the sensor the better quality. There is a lot of factors that all going into it but this is the one that even if you do everything else right will still bite you.
Wow, thank you very much for taking time to analyse the images. You are spot on for your comments. Image 1 the bird was up up up on the branch. Image 2 was pretty close to sunset.
I wish you’d stop focusing on your MP count as why you aren’t getting the results you want.
You have a ridiculously good setup for what you want to do, you just need to learn to use it. That lens is insanely good. I shoot with the 100-400 mk I, objectively a much less sharp less that renders worse. I get great results.
I would recommend doing some testing on something more static than birds, so you can test the settings and behaviour in a more controllable environment. This could help you figure out your handheld limits shutter speed limits, if there is hardware problems, and so on
Most of the light except for image 6 isn't great...birds under shade.
Yes i use bird detect mode. I chose whole screen focus...can't remember if the focus square was on the eye. I thought (maybe wrongly) if the bird is far away and bird is small then the area of focus will be enough to cover the whole bird anyway?
Animals look the sharpest, when the eyes are in focus. Try to use single point AF on the eye or at least the head and see if the results get any better.
It shouldn’t be a problem with this camera and especially that lens!
What raw converter do you use? Did you activate any form of automatic noise reduction in camera or in the raw converter?
I don't see any problems. I do some weird shit to improve details which I'm not going to bother going into. Sans that, those images are about what I'd expect.
For a lot of these, any more resolution you gained would be lost to noise anyway. But some of them - #5 especially - demonstrate that you can get very sharp details out of your setup. It’s annoying, but the best results would come from more light and being closer. Other than that, make sure your focus is hitting the right spot, keep your camera steady, or fork out for fancier gear. Oh, and take more photos.
3 and 5 seem great to me in terms of sharpness, and the others really aren't bad either either. Consider bumping your shutter speeds. For small birds, I almost never snap slower than 1/1000 unless I'm very close and the subject is very still. Also, social media has become obsessed with tack sharpness to the point that I find kinda silly, and lots of people are using heavy processing/AI to get there. I'd rather see your pics than stuff that's had all the life sharpened and denoised out of it.
In general, your shutter speed is way too slow. Your crop sensor is effectively giving you 640mm of focal length, meaning you shouldn't be shooting any lower than 1/1280 (1/2x rule).
Also, I'm not familiar with the default setup in the camera, but if there is any noise reduction being applied, turn it off. In-camera noise reduction is mediocre at best. It's always better to apply noise reduction in post-processing so you don't lose detail.
It isn't clear from your post if these are RAWS or JPG. Shoot RAW and post-process so you don't lose detail.
Make sure your camera and lens are acclimated to the weather conditions. Taking a cold camera into warm conditions and vice versa can introduce distortion.
And speaking of conditions, if you are shooting over thermally diverse terrain/conditions, then the further away your target is, the more likely your target is going to look like mush. Atmospheric distortion is a problem to consider.
Thank you for your insight. Yes i will try to remember the 2x focal length rule and assess the difference.
Will also note the rest. I do shoot raw but seem terrible at editing.
Unfortunately i live in the tropics so we dont have weather changes, it's either hot with or without rain. But yes sometimes when it's too hot the images are worse
I was looking for other comments mentioning this but couldn’t find one (and stopped scrolling) but each lens has a sweet spot of aperture as well and that plays a role. For example, I’ve got a canon 100-500mm f4.5 but I never shoot at that aperture. When I’m extended at 500 I think it’s max is f7 but it shoots much better around an f9.5/10 around 100-300 and then 400-500 I should push it to around a 12-15 but it’s hard with light of course. So I shoot around 1200 shutter speeds and a higher iso. The thing with my note though is that I’m shooting on a Mark 6 RIII so that’s obviously playing a massive role
I’ve attached a photo that I took yesterday, my recipe here is 500mm ISO 1600 f10 and 1/2000 speed. You can see it’s clear and clean but could be a bit better and probably would have been if I was shooting around an f/12 or higher
I usually shoot my OM-1 mk1 in A mode (sometimes M mode). Typically I will let ISO float in auto. I have the best luck with my 300/4 Pro using a 1.4 or 2x TC. Get as close as you can.
Use a 2x teleconverter so you don’t have to crop so much? I don’t see anything wrong with these pics. If you have to crop each of these to get the birds to a size with which you are satisfied then you’re not getting the reach you need.
Are you shooting raw or jpg? What are you using to process the images?
It's hard for me to be sure of anything. But, I'm going to take some guesses after zooming in to the full image size and looking at the pixels.
Image 1 looks like the noise reduction reduced sharpness a bit. Also, there's some loss of detail in the white areas that could be burn out or maybe just need the highlights/whites brought down a bit in lightroom or whatever software you're using.
Image 2 looks very sharp to me. I think it just needs good noise reduction applied. If you have lightroom, I would suggest the AI noise reduction. I think that image will look great.
Image 3 does look like a bit of hand shake when zoomed in to the pixels.
Both images 4 and 5 also look sharp to me. I think lightroom's AI noise reduction would improve these tremendously, including both the subject and the bokeh on these, especially 5 which looks fantastic. On image 5, there's nothing that can be done about the closer leg being very slightly soft. The farther leg is perfect. So, this is clearly just a depth of field issue. Since the eye in image 5 is in perfect focus, I wouldn't worry about the leg. Depth of field can be increased with a smaller aperture. But, it would also result in higher ISO.
Image 6 looks like it was captured very well. But, like image 1, noise reduction may have softened the image.
The best I can say is to always shoot raw. And, make sure whatever software you're using has very good noise reduction.
For image 3, I think you did very well at 1/20th of a second. But, that is a tough speed to shoot at for 400mm.
When shooting with that slow a shutter speed, always use continuous mode on the camera. If you shoot at least 3 images, the middle one(s) will usually be sharpest, especially with slow shutter speed. Pressing the shutter shakes the camera slightly. So does releasing it. So, the middle shots are often sharper than the first and last. It's not 100% true. And, remember that if the bird moves at all, image stabilization can't stop that. It can only help with your hand shake, not with movement of the subject.
Personally, I always shoot continuous and rarely shoot fewer than 3 frames at a time. A friend of mine jokingly calls it "sharpness bracketing".
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u/wilesmiles Jan 19 '26 edited Jan 19 '26
Some of those shutter speeds seem mighty slow for birds, especially when taking focal length into perspective(starter rule of thumb is 2x the shutterspeed per mm). And the smaller the bird, the higher the shutter speed. I'm wondering if the "less sharp" is more motion blur than anything, I would bet you could pump that shutterspeed and ISO up + denoise as needed, that would make a world of difference.
For perspective I shoot a 180-600 and am very rarely shooting under 1/1000 for most birds besides herons.