A challenge, and how much is 'enough'.

[unfocused]

Living in the Midwest all my life, I'm extremely jealous of people who have the good fortune to live in areas where the wildlife is more plentiful, weather more appealing and the landscape is not comprised of corn as far as the eye can see. The most abundant wildlife for us are suicidal deer leaping into the sides of cars.

 

[3kramd5]

The OOF is really throwing me. In my mind, I'd expect the treeline (top frame) to be the furthest object. The massive blur wall behind the owl looks like it's between the owl and the treeline, but the OOF says otherwise.

I'd go 1Ds III w/300mm @ 2.8, ISO 1600, but if you're 50 feet away that doesn't seem long enough unless.

Looking forward to the big reveal!

Maybe I can explain the OOF areas. The owl is sitting on a branch of a tree fairly close to the one behind it, the one with the distinct branches. Then there is my driveway and then dense foliage.

That would do it. It gives really interesting depth to the photo.

Was a TC used?

 

[privatebydesign]

Living in the Midwest all my life, I'm extremely jealous of people who have the good fortune to live in areas where the wildlife is more plentiful, weather more appealing and the landscape is not comprised of corn as far as the eye can see. The most abundant wildlife for us are suicidal deer leaping into the sides of cars.

We have a lot of suicidal deer too! But I am down a dirt road so our neighborhood deer are pretty tame, we also have, at the other extreme, a lot of gopher tortoises and, of course, alligators.

These two are from a gentle walk around my neighborhood a few days ago.

 

[privatebydesign]

The OOF is really throwing me. In my mind, I'd expect the treeline (top frame) to be the furthest object. The massive blur wall behind the owl looks like it's between the owl and the treeline, but the OOF says otherwise.

I'd go 1Ds III w/300mm @ 2.8, ISO 1600, but if you're 50 feet away that doesn't seem long enough unless.

Looking forward to the big reveal!

Maybe I can explain the OOF areas. The owl is sitting on a branch of a tree fairly close to the one behind it, the one with the distinct branches. Then there is my driveway and then dense foliage.

That would do it. It gives really interesting depth to the photo.

Was a TC used?

No I didn't use a TC, but close........

 

[Sporgon]

Looking at those casual long focal length shots I almost wonder if you, like myself, have treated yourself to a G3X. I've recently bought the EOS M3 system, and as I now have the viewfinder I got the G3X as well.

The tight, even grain pattern of the owl pic reminds me of these latest high tech sensors, but I'm still dubious that you'd have got to that size output with that definition.

Here's one of my first test shots at low ISO, full zoom. I've sized it up to 24" print.

I should add that unless you were very close I think you would have had trouble getting that seperation with such a small sensor. It's beginning to look to me as if you've cropped in tight on a FF and then resized up a fair bit.

 

[fentiger]

Canon 1Dmk4 with a 400/2.8 mk1

 

[d]

So my challenge, can anybody guess the camera, lens and settings that make this very presentable 16"x24" print?

I'll stick with Eldar's guess of the 1DsIII + 70-200 2.8. The noise looks about right for 1600, too, but maybe you're a gun at NR and it's actually ISO 3200

To that I'll add an EF12 extension tube @ ~140mm

Shutter maybe 1/20 (you have IS I assume!), aperture f/4

I like owls - nice shot!

d.

 

[Sporgon]

Yes I'm pretty certain now that the point you are making is one of mega pixels, and that this was probably a 1DsIII shot, probably on a 300 mil lens, but then cropped in to leave about 8 MP, then scaled back up to 24" output @ 240 dpi in PS. That would explain the extreme seperation.

If so it's an interesting comparison with the latest high MP small sensors, because it show that beyond a certain point of potential resolution capture size (sensor size) has as much influence on IQ as cramping in more MP.

I've pretty much discounted the 5Ds from my possible future hardware. Although it is without doubt capable of superb quality I'll be interested to see what the next generation of lower MP FF cameras can do in comparison.

If older tech I still think the owl pic is below 800 ISO.

 

[zim]

Crop sensor with a 70-200 f2.8 ? @200mm- f3.2 f3.5 ;D

 

[ethanz]

I am far more interested in where and how people manage to find owls willing to pose. We have at least one barred owl in the neighborhood, but only know that from she/he asking who is cooking for you, plus the very rare sighting of a blur of wings and feathers in the dark.

Where do people live that they manage to find these birds perching away on a branch in any kind of light?

I live in rural Central Florida, the owl lives in my yard and was 50' or so outside my garage.

May I come visit you and see him? I've only seen one owl in the pitch black night. Fortunately I had my big flash. He didn't like that. lol

 

[ethanz]

Living in the Midwest all my life, I'm extremely jealous of people who have the good fortune to live in areas where the wildlife is more plentiful, weather more appealing and the landscape is not comprised of corn as far as the eye can see. The most abundant wildlife for us are suicidal deer leaping into the sides of cars.

Come on, the corn and plainness of the midwest is beautiful. After coming back from long trips elsewhere I appreciate the beauty of every place God has made.

 

[ajfotofilmagem]

Canon 5d original + 400mm F5.6 :

I've done in the past a print on photo paper 70 cm, with the totally bonehead Rebel XTi (10 megapixel) with the old lens Tokina 16-50mm F2.8, and the result was very good.
All I did was overexpose a little bit, keep the ISO200 and stop down the lens to F4. No one could say it was "only" 10 megapixel.

 

[unfocused]

I am far more interested in where and how people manage to find owls willing to pose. We have at least one barred owl in the neighborhood, but only know that from she/he asking who is cooking for you, plus the very rare sighting of a blur of wings and feathers in the dark.

Where do people live that they manage to find these birds perching away on a branch in any kind of light?

I live in rural Central Florida, the owl lives in my yard and was 50' or so outside my garage.

May I come visit you and see him? I've only seen one owl in the pitch black night. Fortunately I had my big flash. He didn't like that. lol

Party at Private's house. BYOC. (Bring Your Own Canon.)

 

[JClark]

Apologies in advance if I'm either going too far afield or dragging this back to an original topic which has drifted, but I'm not prepared to make a guess at the actual equipment used... That said, the larger question of how much is enough is always a question for rousing debate, isn't it?

In the case of *this specific image*, whatever the OP has done is clearly good enough to print (IMHO of course). That said, it's also my opinion that the subject matter and composition is as much a cause of this as is the technical side of it. The owl looks great, the eyes connect and the catchlight is striking. It's a *good photo* and that goes a long way toward mitigating the shortcomings, and to be fair, there are some. The feather detail is muddy and the branch isn't crisp. Maybe some aggressive noise reduction? But as I said, not a problem (and at a few feet viewing distance, you wouldn't notice anyway. And at ANY distance, non-photographers probably wouldn't care if they dig the owl - I've seen some stuff at high end galleries in Santa Fe that, up close, meaning 2 feet is embarrassing. But it still sells on subject and composition).

But let's say that this is a landscape that features high-frequency rocks, or water. To my mind, an equal wouldn't be as compelling because while the parts of *this* image that could be seen as "substandard" are largely irrelevant. In another image, they might not be.

Regardless - interesting discussion. Thanks OP for an interesting perspective. I'll be curious to know the answer.

 

[Ryananthony]

I was at a hospital and in the room was a 16x24 print of an owl in flight. The picture was a blurry mess and in my opinion should never have been printed. That didn't stop my parents ( who I was seeing ) from gawking at how great that photo was. I don't think a lot of regular people notice the ''details''

 

[wsmith96]

I'm guessing it was a 1DsIII with a 300 f/2.8 mk I IS L. Settings ISO 1600, F4.0, 300mm. The bokeh in the back is throwing me off - it looks like you added some blur from just on top of the owl's head then down, but the above the owls head appears more in focus. There must be another branch just behind the owls head at the upper right with leaves coming off of it.

 

[StudentOfLight]

I'm gonna guess on the conservative side of the spectrum:
EOS 700D with 55-250mm IS STM (zoomed to 250mm + cropped slightly)

Looks like cloudy or full-shade, so maybe a few stops less than full sun...
maybe an exposure of about 1/200s at f/5.6, ISO 200.

For me enough is:
60D (APS-C body with all crosstype AF)
24mm STM
100mm non-L macro
600EX RT
Misc (batteries/cards/gels... etc.)

 

[IglooEater]

If Eldar is right and it's the 1ds iii and the 70-200 2.8, then... Both of those are really great pieces of gear and hardly to be sneezed at. If it was a 40D and a 75-300, then you'd have a point.

Have to say that I hope privatebydesign will let us know what it is

Of course I'll let you know, I was just hoping that a few more people would try and guess.

I must say the two people who's opinions I respect most here are the two that rose to the challenge, and they are both very close but circling around the actual answer.

Sporgon also makes a very valid point with regards modern software, it is stunningly good, as are modern printing algorithms.

Come on IglooEater, have a guess

Of course, and you're right- I forgot to give a proper guess . I'm guessing it's not the combo I mentioned, and something rather higher end. Probably full frame, but then, at 50' away could well be crop.
Maybe a 7D and a 100-400 vI. At f/5.6 and, oh, say 320mm. ISO 2000 1/100 second. I'm guessing this is all wrong, but hey- that's the point!

 

[privatebydesign]

Well done everybody that put themselves out there, there were some very good guesses!

1Ds MkIII, 300mm f2.8IS MkI, 400iso, f2.8, 1/30 (handheld).

The interesting bit? It is a 75% crop, or slightly over 5MP from a 21MP capture, then re-sampled to 240ppi at 16"x24" (well done Sporgon, I expect no less from you).

Now a couple have made comments on the quality, I can assure you as a high end printer this image prints perfectly to 16"x24", the issue with detail, as I said at the outset, is not lack of resolution as evidenced by the cobweb, it is because of the very low contrast in the scene, the fine feather details are there when they go against the green background, just not when they are on top of each other.

So a few things I found interesting.

A 75% crop gives me an equivalent crop factor of 2, so I'd get a M4/3 sensor with a 300mm lens, or an equivalent fov of a 600mm lens and a dof of f5.6 and an iso of 800, very close to almost all the genuine guesses.

IS is amazing, even older IS. 1/30 sec with a 600mm fov is pretty darn good in my book.

You can play with noise reduction until you are happy, especially with an image like this, the more time you spend processing and masking the better the result. I only did very basic global adjustments to the image, if I spent an hour on it I could remove all the noise and sharpen up the detail. To be honest it was a throwaway crop my wife wanted to see, the original is a landscape orientation image, I'd never crop as hard. But it got me thinking what I could actually do with it and I surprised myself.

If you want genuine unbiased and friendly advice on actual image quality here trust the opinion of Sporgon and Eldar, they both know what they are looking at and obviously look at large numbers of images, and to our great benefit can use that experience to make honest assessments.


Here is the full frame of the original image.

Hope everybody found something of interest.

 

[Eldar]

Interesting Scott!

Good to see the full size picture. I liked that composition better

i am clearly not the print wizard you are, but I have also printed heavily cropped images at sizes I initially thought would not work and people need to consider what they need all the resolution for. Is it for printing or is it for insane zooming and pixel peeping on their computer screens?