Originally posted by markwoodfin Hi,
I am getting quite frustrated by not being able to get anything like sharp pictures with my 150mm-450mm, either on my K3ii or K1. In a static test I seem to be able to get a sharp picture but often in the real world photographing wildlife, it lets me down. It will seem to be focussed (and i have done static focus tests) but often and especially in good sunlight nothing is sharp. The pictures have a strange look to them where there appear to be bands of un-sharpness running roughly vertically through the image. Please comment on the picture added. It was taken today in good sunlight. K3ii, 150-450mm, F8, 1/2000 and ISO 640. Camera SR was left on and I was balancing the lens on a bean bag. The hares were not running very fast and 1/2000 should have been more than adequate to stop them. Note the un-sharp hares and odd fuzzy banding in the grass with 150-450mm. The second image was taken first with DFA 300mm. Wide open at F4 but much better.
The first picture is a cropped image but not resized. Look at the grass. Parts are sharp but other part completely un-sharp. Not a focussing issue, it appears at all distances within the frame.
Comments or suggestions on the problem or technique welcome.
The second image was taken using the DFA 300mm a few minutes earlier. Although my focus is not perfect on the hares you can see that the gradation from sharp to out of focus is much smoother and the sharp grass is much sharper. This is a smaller crop of the full APSC frame. K3ii & 300mm F4, 1/2000. I switched to the longer lens because they were not coming any closer but wish I had not.
Hi Mark - "I think" what we see is a combo of backfocus and some kind of SR related blur... Mine took almost a max setting to compensate focus, but it's held fine since my first adjustment. I tend to use TAV and try to keep this lens at or above F7.1 and always above 1/1500th if possible, and just let the ISO roam... Panning with SR I thought was a known no-no ? At any rate, turn it off if you haven't already and give us a shout back.
One last thing... make sure you fine tune your AF in natural light, not indoors. I use one of those yellow yard sticks leaning against my back fence at a 45 deg angle. I always make sure the plane of focus for my liking is a little more forgiving to use DOF to my advantage to the front a hair if anything, so if I miss focus, it might at least be within the focal plane margin of error and eliminate backfocus, for which there is no margin for error, just more error, heh.
Hope that helps,
Eric