Gulp!

Dalmatian Pelican, Nalsarovar, Gujarat, march 2009.

I'd never seen a Gular pouch this red before!, I guess I had never seen breeding(?) colors on this bird earlier.

Inspite of a very high shutter speed, the image looks soft. camera shake?

I have also felt that Images I shoot in Raw, give me lesser sharp shots as compared to shooting sRaw format. this image was with Raw, but most others on this trip (I was short of card space:p) were with sRaw and I got a llarge number of relatively good shots.

Has anybody else tried this alternative format?

EOS 40D + 70-300 IS. Av, Cropped image.

1/1600; f5.6; ISO 125

Hi Amit,
Is it a big crop? The softness of the image could be due to the cropping. You have lost detail on the wings even at 1/1600 exposure. I would reduce the saturation a bit.

Amit,
This appears to be a big crop. The quality decreases with cropping. Please check the point of focus. Was it partially on the Pelican and partly on the water? You can check the focus points in zoom browser supplied with your camera.

I don't think sRAW is sharper than the RAW. There is no sharpening applied to RAW files of Canon. sRAW files are smaller in size, so you may not be zooming them to the size as the RAW files during your evaluation.

I feel the saturation is on the higher size. Even if the pouch is more red, the water colour indicates that saturation is high.

Cheers,
Sabyasachi

Hi Amit,

I agree about the saturation, reducing it a bit will enhance the image further. Composition wise the low angle is good. A bit of more head turn towards you and positioning the bird a bit more towards the left would have added to the composition.

Look forward to more...

Stll further, in harsh light it is difficult to record detail, which could result in an image appearing less sharp.

Apana

Hi All,

AF point (centre) on the neck,just below the head.
It is not heavily cropped. (I think - I had to downsize significantly to post)
Yes the light was quite harsh

Attached the full frame, converted w/o any PP adjustments. Default sharpening at 3 (0-10) for picture style standard. WB set to 'daylight' which caused a little oversaturation(?)

To add to my earlier thoughts-

Usually I end up with about 20-30% of 'usable' shots, shooting in raw by default.
On that day since I was short of space, I shot in sRaw, switching to Raw only where i got excited.:-) and was surprised to see more than 70% of my shots quite sharp. (however, the light conditions were much brighter than usual for me.) thats what got me wondering - Since sraw is a much smaller file size, the camera must be doing something:confused: during compressing data from the same sensor in a smaller package.

In- camera sharpening will not come into effect on RAW modes. I think this is a result of harsh light, distance, subject movement, and lens quality.

Apana