My usual xt50 and 150-500mm tamron. Not sure if I over processed this
this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2026
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I love the IBIS in my Oly E-M1, but at extreme focal lengths my cheap 75-300mm lens struggles. I try to reduce my focal length a little bit and stop my aperture down 1-2 stops and I find I get way better results.
Yeah I could have gone up a stop, thats a good shout. I was only at ISO 3200 so I had more wiggle room, I need to trust my denoise software more as a stop and a faster shutter speed would have helped this shot.
Dang, ISO 3200! Wow I don't see a speck of grain. The lighting must have been pretty rough.
Yeah it was really dark. Pureraw 6 is just incredible about dealing with grain. I have to dig out the raw and export that with no mods to show you
denoised but unprocessed and processed:
and the raw:
Interesting. Thanks for sharing. By chance did you shoot with spot metering? To me, the original looks a bit overexposed. I'm trying to figure out what spot the camera was measuring for 18% gray.
Its manual, didn't have a lot of time to adjust this one as the mallard was moving out of sight quite quickly and it wasn't what I had setup for as I was waiting on a coot on the water.
I tend to lock the shutter speed and aperture for the depth of field I want, then set the ISO manually to suit the subject. If the ISO gets too high, and it seems I can go higher than I though, I tend to increase the aperture, then as a last resort I will slow the shutter down. My big zoom is f6.7 min at its maximum range, so its not the brightest.
I can always fix the background in post as long as I haven't completely clipped it.
Thanks for sharing your process, it helps me with my own. I shoot in manual too, and with spot metering while we still have snow, which is why my ISO values are so erratic. I do let the camera handle the ISO. My max is f/6.7 at the long end too (300mm), luckily we have good lighting most of the time so I stop down to f/7.1 or f/8 for sharpness. Then I set my shutter speed based on exposure or if the subject is in motion.
Interesting, very similar to me. Yeah its a constant battle to get the shutter speed I want for the subject, its the top of my priority list.
I need to use my monopod more as that really helps let me slow shutter apeed when more mobile, I just get lazy converting the tripod to it when using the tripod for more static locations on the same day.
I'm in the same boat. I hate lugging a tripod or monopod around. I will be using one quite a bit soon though. I'll be taking lots of cool macro shots when spring kicks into gear.