The red caught my eye. This was set at 1024 by 1024 and now is compressed see Exif, what am I doing wrong, the photo is way softer than it should be.

[photolady95]

Use Flickr instead. The forum resizes our photos if they are larger than depicted in the rules. The below quote is from the section on how to upload your photos. Since you have chosen to attach the photo, the quote gives you dimensions on size of attachments.

We recommend uploading photos no wider than 1280x800 pixels to avoid auto-scaling.

[kchamber4]

It looks like the focus area is the very front of the flower i.e. the spines pointing directly at the camera lens. Try live view and zoom in on the flower to ensure that the focus is correct. Also, not sure about the 300mm's sharpness at F16, or F11 and if you were using a tripod or not, but if you could take the F-Stop to 11 or 16 and use a tripod and shoot at a slower speed, you should be able to have a deeper Field of Focus which even if you were very close the flower, which I believe you were, more of it could stay sharp.

[gmans]

Use Flickr instead. The forum resizes our photos if they are larger than depicted in the rules. The below quote is from the section on how to upload your photos. Since you have chosen to attach the photo, the quote gives you dimensions on size of attachments.

The photo was within the dimension but was still compressed and I do not have a flicker account. The auto resize/compression seems to work on photos that are within the size limit, I could be wrong but that what it seems to me. The photo was 1024 by 683 pixels and 212 KB so it is either my software measurment is wrong or there is compression happening. Thank you for your response, it is a frustration to see the image change and has been mentioned in other posts from time to time, not just by me.

[photolady95]

But flickr is free and you can set it up for private use only if you don't want others looking at your photos. Plus you can disable downloading of your photos too. Mine is set to not allow downloads, nor can anyone order prints but me.

[gmans]

It looks like the focus area is the very front of the flower i.e. the spines pointing directly at the camera lens. Try live view and zoom in on the flower to ensure that the focus is correct. Also, not sure about the 300mm's sharpness at F16, or F11 and if you were using a tripod or not, but if you could take the F-Stop to 11 or 16 and use a tripod and shoot at a slower speed, you should be able to have a deeper Field of Focus which even if you were very close the flower, which I believe you were, more of it could stay sharp.

Cheers and thank you. You are correct the focus was at the front.

[Cee Cee]

I think the process for attachments is different to uploading to an album, I noticed some degradation on occasions when posting photos by attachment. I found it better to upload to an album (at just under max size -1000) and then use the "insert image" function to add the photo to your post, or use flickr. I've recently created a flickr account and I find it much easier to upload photos to flickr ( just drag & drop) I upload at a reduced size of 1600 max dimension which gives a good display size viewing on flickr and I've not noticed any degradation at all when linking from flickr - flickr creates several size images when you upload and its simple to link the 1024 size into your PF thread.
the thread here explains... cheers
https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/12-post-your-photos/274818-nature-flickr-link-test.html

[gmans]

I think the process for attachments is different to uploading to an album, I noticed some degradation on occasions when posting photos by attachment. I found it better to upload to an album (at just under max size -1000) and then use the "insert image" function to add the photo to your post, or use flickr. I've recently created a flickr account and I find it much easier to upload photos to flickr ( just drag & drop) I upload at a reduced size of 1600 max dimension which gives a good display size viewing on flickr and I've not noticed any degradation at all when linking from flickr - flickr creates several size images when you upload and its simple to link the 1024 size into your PF thread.
the thread here explains... cheers
https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/12-post-your-photos/274818-nature-flickr-link-test.html

Thanks Cee Cee, will check flickr out, was resisting another site to post to but if as you say it is easier, may have to change my mind.