Looks nice and sharp for a handheld shot. Was this truly handheld, or were you bracing the camera/lens against anything.
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John
Well F10 seems to work ok for me what would you suggest ?
I was leaning my shoulder on my door frame camera and lens were in my hand
I will tend to bracket aperture and start with wide open and work my way down. I assume that this shot at 300mm means that "wide open" is f/5.6 on your lens. With your camera you are shooting (EOS 700D) at a full-frame equivalent of 480mm, so a 1/200th sec exposure, even on a stabilized lens is pushing your luck when hand-holding, even in a braced shooting position like the one you were using.
That being said, I tend to be a tripod shooter in order to maximize sharpness for these types of shots.
I know my Nikon 70-300 mm is better at between f/8 and f/11 than (wide open) at f/5.6, so I'd have probably done the same Les.
Good result, perhaps just a tad over-sharpened when viewed at 100%.
Dave
For handheld at a long focal length, yes.
When someone is shooting at a focal length close to 500mm FF equivalent, there can be a lot of camera movement even with image stabilization turned on. In fact, just keeping the lens on target can be challenging. I find a bit of camera motion will ruin an image far more quickly than the slight softening one finds shooting wider open.