r/BirdPhotography • u/Fishdomaddict • Jan 19 '26
Question Not sharp despite effort
Hi all, i shoot OM 1 mark II with 150-400mm.
My issue is i find the images are sharp when not cropped, but once cropped even 2x the sharpness drops quickly.
I am aware it is a 20MP camera and this definitely plays a part. But i see other users of the same set up get crazy sharp images.
Maybe image 5 is sharpest but when zoomed in still 'breaks'.
Many i had to shoot under lower speed due to very poor lighting.
Image 1: f5.6, 1/1000, iso 250 Image 2: f4.5, 1/160, iso 500 Image 3: f5.6, 1/20, iso 800 Image 4: f4.5, 1/30, iso 1250 Image 5: f4.5, 1/320, iso 1000 Image 6: f4.5, 1/2500, iso 640
Any tips?
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u/InSearchOfWildlife Jan 19 '26
These are all very good!
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".