Details matter

[NorthernFocus]

There's an old saying something to the effect of "if you mind the pennies, the dollars will take care of themselves". Well so it is with photography. If you mind the basics, exposure, focus, ss, etc, the image quality will take care of itself.

NIKON D7100, AF-S 80-400 VR
f/5.6 @ 310 mm, 1/1000, ISO 500
Full vertical crop out of an original horizontal format.



Tighter crop



And full resolution. This crop is about one percent of the original pixels.



Just trying to make the point that if you start with good technical execution, you have a lot to work with. I shot this a while back while testing out the new 80-400VR.

But this reminds me how good the IQ was from the D7100 that I just busted

[Mike Buckley]

Nah. All of the credit goes to the model and the equipment.

[NorthernFocus]

Nah. All of the credit goes to the model and the equipment.

True but that's beside the point

[IzzieK]

Now I am confused...who is really Grace? Your wife or your dog???

[NorthernFocus]

As I said in the other thread, no hope for Grace getting into photography. No thumbs, she tramples the flowers, and keeps knocking the tripod over. She does well on the other end of the camera though.

[John 2]

Yup and it's as good up to about ISO 800 -1000 and its worth appreciating. I'm always reminded that in the days when only film was available, "fine grain" was generally the province of ISO 200, ISO 400 needed a bit of a compromise but was acceptable and anything above that was desperation territory.

[DanK]

good shot, good point, and looks like a great dog. Hard to tell with just the face--is it a chocolate lab, or a Chesapeake?

[chauncey]

If you mind the basics, exposure, focus, ss, etc, the image quality will take care of itself

Well said and well illustrated Dan...unfortunately the folks that insist on a longer viewing distance, IMHO, fail to see the importance in all that pixel-peeping.

[FrankMi]

Just trying to make the point that if you start with good technical execution, you have a lot to work with.

I couldn't agree more Dan, and your examples prove your point.

Despite all the advances made in post processing software, there is no substitute for a properly captured image. You may, for example, be able to give the appearance of sharpening an image in PP but you can't create the pixels that aren't there in the original.

[rtbaum]

This is a concept that I am appreciative of constantly with my bird photography

[NorthernFocus]

If an image can be downsampled significantly (e.g. for web use) then a lot of flaws can be covered up. But in spite of all of the correction software available nowadays, there is still no true substitute for making a properly focused capture. There's a lot more leeway on exposure short of underexposure causing noise or overexposure killing highlights.

good shot, good point, and looks like a great dog. Hard to tell with just the face--is it a chocolate lab, or a Chesapeake?

She's an unusually dark german shorthair pointer. Unusually goofy too.

[rtbaum]

Dan- I had a liver shorthair, I believe that goofiness is a breed characteristic. The best description of the breed is ' geniuses in the field, morons in the home'. My favorite way of keeping her entertained was to get some scent on a stick, blocking her vision, and throwing the stick as far as possible into the woods. She never failed to recover the exact stick........even after she went blind!

[NorthernFocus]

Ours is currently in the process of finding and bringing home all of the balls she lost last fall that have been buried in snow all winter. It amazes me how she locates them. We can be walking down the road and she will suddenly throw her nose in the air, take off into the bushes, and pop back out with a ball that she left there months ago.

[IzzieK]

As I said in the other thread, no hope for Grace getting into photography. No thumbs, she tramples the flowers, and keeps knocking the tripod over. She does well on the other end of the camera though.

OK...you got me there!!

[Brev00]

Nice eyeball! I am a bit confused, though. Your thesis seems self-evident. Is there some school of thought that says proper technique is secondary to something? The only thing I can think of that matter more to me is composition. That is, a clear and accurate shot with wonderful exposure of nothing interesting is still not interesting. But, on the other hand, a wonderful concept made hazy by incorrect settings ain't too great, either. So, I suppose, as in many endeavors, mastering the fundamentals is primary and then applying these fundamentals with artistic vision is secondary (in time but not importance). Maybe if I were a dog lover I would completely agree with you and Grace.

[NorthernFocus]

OK...you got me there!!

Unintentional, Izzie. I guess I've posted so many photos of Grace that I assumed everyone knows her by name.

...Your thesis seems self-evident...

Maybe I just needed a new thread title as an excuse to post more photos of my doghter

Though it does seem self evident, people spend a lot of time fussing over minutia and overlooking the basics. It may have been more appropriate for the thread to have been about a demonstration of the astonishing capabilities of modern equipment. That this sort of image quality came from a relatively inexpensive camera body and a 5x zoom lens (albeit not a cheap one).

[FrankMi]

Unintentional, Izzie. I guess I've posted so many photos of Grace that I assumed everyone knows her by name..

Not that the tag on the collar in the first image has any significance....

[NorthernFocus]

Not that the tag on the collar in the first image has any significance....

Izzie was referring to another thread where I was talking about my wife but then threw Grace's name into the mix. For the record my bride's name is Paige.

[IzzieK]

And so this conversation went down from here...

[flashback]

Dan,
Your point is quite clear, namely that a properly focused subject will have almost infinite detail. The shots of Grace are great.