How to Crop & Zoom Properly?

[Vardi]

Quick question about cropping & zooming in on a section of an image...

Yesterday I was out and about and got the chance to shoot some nice shots of an Osprey soaring overhead. Even with my 200mm at full zoom the bird was still quite small in the frame.... Anyway once I got the pics loaded up I cropped in on the bird and tried to blow it up a bit bigger.... The image lost all clarity and looked like a blur....

So my question is....

For future when I am taking shots that I would like to zoom and pull out small or distant objects what settings should I be using???
Shoot in RAW? (I was just shooting JPEG)
Special Software to crop & zoom? (Currently using iPhoto...)

Here are is one of the shots to better explain my point....



And after my attempt at cropping...


Any hints or tips would be greatly appreciated!!!

Cheers | Vardi

[autofocus]

A couple of questions first...what f/stop and shutter speed was set for the shot? Was your camera set for (S) single shot focus, or (C) continuous focus?
Now for some issues with shooting this type of shot. First off, you are shooting and panning a moving target, and the camera may have a hard time tracking and locking in perfect focus. Second issue: shooting at the extreme ends of zoom lenses is usually not their best focal lengths as far as clarity. At 200mm, your lense was max'd out, and probably not it's sharpest setting. If you shot this in auto mode it's very possible your camera may have auto set the aperture and shutter speed that may not have been optimal for this kind of shot

[Vardi]

Originally Posted by autofocus

A couple of questions first...what f/stop and shutter speed was set for the shot? Was your camera set for (S) single shot focus, or (C) continuous focus?

Settings:
ISO 400
f/16
1/250 or 1/300 shutter speed (depending where he flew near the sun...)
AF-S Focus

Thanks for the info.... Now how do I set it up correctly so I can get the best out of situations like this??

[autofocus]

Settings:
ISO 400 OK, but in bright conditions like your shot, ISO 100 or 200 would probably be better to maximize clarity
f/16 There is this problem with small apertures called diffraction which can also compromise clarity. A setting of f/8 could have been better, and being that it's larger and lets more light hit the sensor you could have gone with a faster shutter speed. 1/500 or faster would have stopped the action better
1/250 or 1/300 shutter speed (depending where he flew near the sun...)See comment above
AF-S Focus This setting is good for stationary subjects like portraits and landscapes, etc. AF-C (continuous) when it works, will attempt to track and focus on the moving subject. The downside of this setting is that the camera will allow you to take the shot even if focus is not locked in. AF-S, however, will only allow the shot to be taken if focus is locked in.

[Vardi]

Hmmm so some subtle changes can make a big difference then!! Great info, thanks a lot!

I'll have to go find that Osprey and get him to fly around for me again... Ha!

The only other thing I guess is should I be shooting in RAW to give me more to play with after or does that not have much to do with it?

[autofocus]

I'll have to go find that Osprey and get him to fly around for me again... Ha!

Remember what I said about shooting with your lens fully zoomed out...optically, it may not be it's strong point

The only other thing I guess is should I be shooting in RAW to give me more to play with after or does that not have much to do with it?

Shooting in RAW is always good, but it's not going to be a magic cure for soft mis-focused images. Plus, I don't know anything about iphoto, and if it supports RAW conversions??

[Doug Sundseth]

All the stuff that Autofocus said is true (though I would often use a high ISO to freeze action on bird shots and accept the concomitant noise). I suspect the biggest problem here is that you're shooting with a 0.4 Megapixel camera.

This number is assuming you have a 16Mpx sensor and measuring the sizes of the resulting images. Cropping to 1/6 horizontally and vertically will give you 1/36 (treated as 1/40 for my estimate, as it was only an estimate) as many pixels to work with. Tight crops (called "digital zoom" by P&S manufacturers) throw away huge amounts of data.

[zona5101]

- running it through a good noise reduction program will help make it a bit better but it is still going to be a rough just from the magnification and lens limitations mentioned above.

[corry]

I have many shots like that..........I love birds............and it just makes me want a bigger lens!!
my 75-300 isn't IS and I'm not sure if that would help or if I need to spend the big bucks on an L lens.

[OsmosisStudios]

Use a longer lens. You're just flat-out cropping too much off. You need to have your subject fill the frame more.

Cropping is NOT an equivalent for a longer lens.