[brightseal]

Or is that the best it gets?

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[UncleVanya]

Or is that the best it gets?

Need a lot more info. Lens? Body? Settings? I’d say it looks nice but I’m on my phone. You probably can view this much larger. My take is that it captures the emotion/feeling very well.

[brightseal]

Need a lot more info

View the EXIF when you get a chance.

[vonBaloney]

Also maybe heat & a bit of smog causing atmospheric distortion that has nothing to do with your equipment.

[Paul the Sunman]

f/14 is never going to be super-sharp, because of diffraction (damned physics). You don't need such depth of field in this shot, as you have no foreground. I would reduce to f/5.6 or f/8, and also reduce ISO, though ISO 400 is perfectly alright on that camera.

But what were you focussing on? If it was just the general sky, it will be hit or miss.

[DeadJohn]

Long focal lengths magnify everything in the scene, including any atmospheric effects. Wind, humidity, thermal currents, etc. can distort extreme telephoto targets. When you look at a bright star at night on the horizon, and it twinkles, similar atmospheric effects are involved.

As already mentioned, f/14 reduces sharpness a bit. f/8 is a good default setting for many lenses when you want sharpness and some depth of field.

Here's a similar scene of mine. Notice how the flagpole or antenna on the left side is wavy, and there are notches in the sun's edge.

[brightseal]

what were you focussing on?

Yea general sky pretty much

[ramseybuckeye]

That's actually pretty good for a long distance shot over water. Atmospheric distortion, as VonBaloney said, can make them look like that. I was OK with this one tonight focused on the kite, looks pretty similar.

[K-Three]

Was this hand held? 1/125 with a 300mm is slow for hand held,
I'd go for 1/250th at least and 1/500th or more if I could.
Open up the aperture, and speed up the shutter,
With the K3 family you can go to ISO 800 or 1,000 without any really bad noise artifacts

But I also agree with the other comments; into the sun, across water, and telephoto compression, lots of things to mess up the light rays and soften an image.

[brightseal]

this one

That's more like what i was hoping for.

---------- Post added 07-24-21 at 00:56 ----------

hand held?

Used a monopod but my hands aren't the steadiest anyway.

[Paul the Sunman]

Yea general sky pretty much

There's nothing for the autofocus to latch onto in featureless sky. Focus on something with some sharp edges for best effect.

[mikesbike]

Was this hand held? 1/125 with a 300mm is slow for hand held,
I'd go for 1/250th at least and 1/500th or more if I could.
Open up the aperture, and speed up the shutter,
With the K3 family you can go to ISO 800 or 1,000 without any really bad noise artifacts

But I also agree with the other comments; into the sun, across water, and telephoto compression, lots of things to mess up the light rays and soften an image.

I agree with this, and the fact atmospheric conditions in this type of scene contribute some to reduced apparent sharpness. Brighter scenes demonstrate sharpness better than darker scenes, in addition to the distortions from the atmosphere shot through it a this angle and lighting. When shooting at such an extreme angle, sunsets, etc. you are shooting through much more atmosphere than is normal. The atmosphere being thus dense enough can present like you are shooting through an additional lens! Best to use this same lens on brightly-lit scenes, then see what happens.

Nonetheless, it is actually a pretty good shot!

[Michail_P]

I'd say I like the photo, it's not that easy to get a super sharp shot with these conditions. Looks pretty good. Sometimes I try manual focus fine adjustment, just to find out how good can the edges get.

[AfterPentax Mark II]

I agree with all the comments above, especially the "slow" shutter speed with this lens. That said if I look at the picture as a whole I like it very much. What is a bit surprising is that due to the overall softness the little boat underneath that big sun gives the impression that it is sharp. So the little boat under that huge sun, well I think it is amazing especially with the warm reddish colours. I think that the original will look even better because this one is downsized I guess for the sake of showing it on this forum. So I second mikesbike praise, a pretty good shot, as well as UncleVanya closing remark. I might even go so far that if it was a very sharp shot it would not have the emotion it has now. Well worth looking at this picture.

[noelpolar]

Fwiw.... I probally would have focused on the boat.... f14 to stretch some reasonable focus to the the clouds etc.... and fired off 5 or 6 frames to get a sharp one given the shutter speed risk. I can get a 1/3 second sharp shot at 150mm this way.

I don't think diffraction is an issue here...... you want the dof f14 brings more.