[frances]

Think I didn't put the photo in correctly earlier, trying again, I am wondering why I am getting pics that are not sharp, it seems worse when I am shooting birds in the water, could it be because the water reflects ? should I be using a polorizer ? I can't get sharp looking pics, for example the pic I have here looks odd to me, not sharp , I took it from far away with my 80-400 Nikon lense , all the way out, but I still think it should be a lot sharper, any advice ?

[Charlotte]

Frances, the first thing that comes to mind is "camera shake". Were you using a tripod? With a long focal length, like 400mm, you need to use a tripod to avoid camera shake, which is always worse at long focal lengths.

Actually the birds look reasonably sharp to me, it's the grass which seems to have a sort of fuzzy glow, which leads me to wonder if the problem is not in-camera but rather overprocessed on PC? It does look oversaturated to me, for one thing, and overprocessing a jpeg file can cause vast degradation of image quality.

A polariser won't directly affect sharpness, and it would ruin those lovely reflections so I wouldn't recommend using a polariser in a shot like this. Besides, it would only cause the light level to drop (by about 1 stop) resulting in a slower shutter speed, which would hinder, not help, your sharpness problem.

In summary, I think your answer is a tripod

EDIT: Another thought - the mother duck looks sharper than the chicks, which have quite a lot of noise (which shows up worse in darker tones). This leads me to think that you used a small aperture (can't see your exif data to check this). Using a small aperture will let less light into the lens, and a low light level causes noise (not to mention a slow shutter speed = camera shake). You didn't need a small aperture in this shot, because a relatively short DoF is required. In fact, I'd prefer the river bank + greenery to be OOF and not in sharp focus - makes it distracting, since you want to direct focus onto the birds. Remember also that the further away the subject is from the lens, the longer DoF you will get from any given aperture setting, so again, as you say you were far away from these birds, you could've used a wide aperture (low f/number) which would've given you a faster shutter speed, in order to minimise camera shake. And remember to keep your shutter speed faster than the inverse of the focal length you are using - in this case, at 400mm you would need to use a shutter speed of at least 1/500 sec. to avoid camera shake.

What is the exif data?

[frances]

Thanks Charlotte ! what you said is very helpful, no I was not using a tripod, and I realize I had better start to use one ! I walk into an area far from my car , I find it hard enough carrying in my heavy camera, lense and bag with other lenses, so I tend to leave my tripod behind, I know, I need a Llama to carry my gear ! but I bought a camera bag which I carry in front of me , and use the bag to steady my camera, probably does not do the trick well enough,also the ground where I have to stand to take the pic is very uneven, and I have to creep down a bank, so a tripod is cumbersome, but what you said is right on ! and I will go back with a tripod, and try again, if the ducks will co-operate and make another appearance, wood ducks are so shy, they swim in the opposit direction as soon as one gets in sight of them, and they are sharp eyed ! Thanks Charlotte ! I'm afraid that I am not fussy enough before taking a shot, I just shoot away, and don't always pay attention to my settings, I can't give you the settings as I have deleted the pics from my camera, but I know that you are right about the problem, I have tried using a polorizer, and found exactly what you said, there was not enough light. I set the camera on shutter priority, and try and make sure my shutter speed is up, but the long lense does not help either. Thanks again !

[Dabhand16]

You might find that a monopod will be better as a camera support because they are much lighter and more maneuverable than a tripod.

Also consider a carbon fibre tripod if weight is an issue. My one only weighs around 1.5 kg complete with the ball head. You can even get carbon fibre monopods, but an ordinary one is not that heavy.

The shot you have shown here is very busy. Maybe the camera was focused on the foliage and tracking the ducks introduced enough movement to take the edge off the sharpness.

Don't forget you can increase the ISO to give faster shutter speeds.

[Steve]

Looking at this I would say its showing the effects of a heavily cropped image. How much of the full frame are we seeing in this shot?

[JMitchell]

The 80-400 has a history of slightly slow AF, due to its range, but this looks almost like ghosting to me, not camera shake. Try with a pod and get back to us

[jake]

You're in a better position than us to judge as you can look at the origional image. If everything is blurred it could be out of focus slightly or most probably camera shake.
On my monitor the duck looks sharper than the ducklings but not critically sharp. I find ducklings are a bundle of energy and move very fast even if it's just a short distance so you will need a faster shutter speed for them than the duck.
I do sometimes HH my long telephoto but it is a fact of life that used that way a lot of images have to be rejected.
What compression are you using when you post the images? I use PSP and if I use "smart compression" which gives me around 25% the posted images are very inferior to those compressed to around 5%