June last year I traded my Nikon D780 in and boought a Nikon D850 back. So far so good. After a couple of weeks using the D850, I noticed I did not have as many keepers as I had with my D780. Lens is the same: Sigma 10-600 Sports.
Pictures are not crisp sharp. Whatever I try, high shutter speed (>1/2000 for birds in flight), ISO limitted to 800, different Aperature settings, nothing gives me many crisp sharp pictures. Today I was confronted again. A Marsh Harrier approached me from the front. I started shooting till the bird was aout of sight.
I made about 80 shots, most are not usable. I attached one. Only edit is made it a JPG from the RAW. Used DxO Photolabs 7. DxO did only optical corrections,not further post processing. I had to resize it from 8256 px wide to 1980 px wide due to limit of this forum.
When needed, I can send the RAW file.
I am wondering what is wrong with this picture, what should I do to get more crisp sharp photo's from BIF?
Is it a hardware issue (lens or body), is it me, pix peeping or something else?
Please help, I do get some second thoughts on the aquirance of the D850 ....
Tino
Hi Tino
Any time I question the quality or performance of my gear, I start with a controlled test. I want a static target and controlled, repeatable conditions. If I can't get a sharp image under those conditions, further testing under more difficult conditions won't matter. Take plenty of images so you can understand focus variation as well. Add to the mix the distance of your subject. Once you have tested at near distances, test at medium and longer distances to make sure you can capture a sharp image. Take note of the lighting since brighter conditions make it a lot easier to have an image that looks sharp.
Normally when you are testing gear, you start on a tripod with good technique. You are trying to test the lens, not your technique initially. Once you have confirmed you can make sharp images on a tripod, you can incorporate handholding if that's how you normally photograph. It will also show you where you need a tripod vs. handholding.
Focus always has variability. What you want is a tight range of focus errors, but lighting, technique and settings have an impact on sharpness. Even with good focus and perfect lighting, you'll have focus errors - some that are clearly discards.
Focus is different from sharpness. There are factors that can cause soft images even if your image is perfectly focused - focal length, aperture choice, etc. Noise is larger in an image after a deep crop. For every 1/3 crop of an image, you increase noise the equivalent of around 1.25 stops. Resizing works the other way. Downsizing an image reduces detail since pixels are being combined and averaged.
Another control point is around editing. Try using Nikon NX Studio to view the image. It's the one program where a JPEG will match the RAW image and the image you view in your cameras LCD . In DXO and other programs you have the question of how the software interprets the RAW data, and how you have set the software for initial view. DXO does a good job, but like Lightroom, it has it's quirks. Let's remove that issue and look at a neutral, unprocessed image. Also keep in mind that any noise reduction is the counterpart of sharpness, so if noise reduction is being applied to your subject, you will lose detail.
I've seen similar softness with distant subjects using the D850. Part of the issue is likely your lens resolution combined with the distance of the subject. Your lens may not be perfectly focused, you may have missed focus slightly, and light levels may be a bit low requiring a higher ISO and the accompanying increase in noise. With a highly magnified view or deep crop, the lack of detail will be apparent.
It's a process. Kind of like Whack-a-Mole. You have to eliminate the variables, confirm what your lens and camera can do well, and then explore the edges where various factors may lead to images that are not sharp enough. Once you complete the exercise, you'll have a lot more confidence in what you and your gear can and cannot achieve.
