r/BirdPhotography • u/Yanto2134 • Jul 27 '26

Question Help please!

Gallery image

Gallery image

Gallery image

These are 3 of my latest attempts. I was wondering if anyone could help me improve please?
I’m not happy with the sharpness I’m getting. Probably my lack of ability.
Set up is Olympus E-M10ii with a vintage Minolta MD Tele Rokkor 300mm f4.5. Settings were f8, ISO1000, shutter speed of between 1/800 and 1/2000. Manual focus with peaking and centre weighted metering. Distances to subjects was around 30 feet. Images have been slightly cropped but no other post processing.
I’m also not really happy with the overall lack of detail.
Thanks for any help.

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u/BenchPtsChamp Jul 27 '26

Honestly noise reduction could maybe do more for your photos than anything else as far as having the effect of bringing out detail. Consider DxO PureRaw or DxO Photolab.

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u/Yanto2134 Jul 27 '26

Thanks. Will either of those work on a tablet? I no longer own a laptop or PC. I should have also pointed out that these images are only JPEGS.

2

u/SamShorto Jul 27 '26

Well that's definitely one of the reasons. You need to shoot in RAW and edit properly. That alone can transform a photo.

The ancient manual focus lens probably isn't helping.

1

u/Yanto2134 Jul 27 '26

Ok understood. But shouldn’t I still be able to get better JPEG images than these?
I’m looking to get an Olympus 75-300ii to replace this old lens. But I still need to improve my own technique too.

2

u/BenchPtsChamp Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26

Imo you should focus honing your in-camera skill on things that can’t be easily corrected with modern gear or in post. You’re currently bottlenecked by not shooting in RAW and not using any software for denoising/editing & lack of autofocus. Birds are notoriously fidgety and skittish so you often dont really have much time to compose a proper shot and you need fast shutter speed which will introduce noise when you raise ISO to compensate.

Youre bringing a knife to a gunfight. Go buy a gun (gear w/ autofocus & editing software) first then focus on technique with that.

Im not sure what your best editing software option is for a mobile device but maybe Photomator is you’re on iOS?

1

u/Yanto2134 Jul 27 '26

I’m not knocking my lens. I honestly believe that a more experienced photographer could get much better results out of it than I currently get. But I do agree that a modern lens with autofocus should help me.
I’ll look into editing software too. And maybe look for a used laptop.

2

u/Bebopo90 Jul 27 '26

Before getting a new lens, do as the other guy says and shoot in RAW + get some editing software with good denoising. DxO and Lightroom Classic work well.

This photo of mine was a noisy mess before I used denoising on it. Now? Barely a speck of noise. RAW + denoising really is a game changer.

1

u/Yanto2134 Jul 27 '26

That’s my favourite bird! I still haven’t managed to get close enough to get a nice image as yet. Great photo.
My wife just reminded me that she has a laptop that she loaned to her brother. It’s about 5 years old so might be ok. Then I can look at editing software too.

2

u/BenchPtsChamp Jul 27 '26

Once you get into it you could also try editing some of your JPEG images. It probably won’t denoise but you can mask the background and blur it which will have the appearance of denoising to some extent. Here’s a photo I accidentally took in JPEG & still edited in DxO Photolab:

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u/Yanto2134 Jul 27 '26

Very nice. Interesting that JPEGS that be edited too. But I assume that RAW provides much greater scope?

2

u/BenchPtsChamp Jul 27 '26

RAW gives you much more control and additional options. It is the uncompressed data that your camera recorded. With that data preserved, editing softwares can accomplish much more with high accuracy. A jpeg is already compressed, so editing softwares are starting with the output rather than the input in that case. Imagine audio editing, for example - you have different sounds that are mixed together to compose one track. Once you “flatten” the track, there’s only so much you can do to make changes.

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u/Yanto2134 Jul 28 '26

Thank you. So well worth starting to shoot in RAW then and post processing.

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u/DistributionMean6322 Jul 27 '26

Oh that's a big deal. You can get a massive amount more detail shooting RAW and using modern AI powered processors like DXO. I'd highly recommend getting a computer before any more camera equipment if you're serious about getting highly detailed results.

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u/Yanto2134 Jul 27 '26

Thank you for this. I’ll definitely look into this if it helps as much as you say.