The image data that I have found is that most images are 2240 X 1480 JPeg’s with file sizes of about 1.2 – 1.5 MB, clearly not big enough.

OK, well first up you’re not shooting at maximum resolution because 2240×1480 equates to around 3mp – I presume even Nikon have gotten beyond 3mp by now! :diablo: So first, ramp the quality setting and resolution up to maximum.

I have used this lens for about 12 months or more on film cameras with no problem and have owned various long lenses (300/400mm) over the years and have not had problems with hand held camera shake and I always used 100 asa, sometimes 50.

Yup, and I used by Canon 100-400 IS with 64ISO film and never felt I had a problem. But I KNOW I can’t reliably hold that lens at 400mm against a fast moving subject at the 1/250 I used to be happy with. Bang the shutter speed up to whatever you can get – shoot aperture priority close to wide open (but maybe not fully wide open if the lens is a bit soft there) if necessary to force the camera to pick as fast a shutter speed as possible – with a minumum 200ISO equivalent you should be looking at 1/1000th or so on bright days which should give you a chance for unshaken pictures (just beware stopped props though, although that may be for later initially).

I went to OW on Sunday and gave the gear a good airing, I used my Nikkor 80-400VR on the body, took about 250 images, most of which are poor by comparison to my film based work.

DSLRs are not designed to delivery perfect results out of the box – the images may well look a little soft, especially if you look at them at 100% resultion/magnification, and they’re likely to be slightly flat for colour too. With a DSLR you have to expect to do some work in Photoshop after the event (unless you really ramp up the in-camera sharpening and saturation, which as has already been stated is a BAD idea) – certainly some messing with the colour balance and levels will be desirable, and a pass with the PS unsharp mask filter will be required to.

All you’ve learned in the past with film SLRs is valid for DSLRs. This isn’t a dig at you, but don’t justify what you are doing now by your success in the past. We’ve all done it, and its only when we finally realise that there’s a new set of rules to learn for digital that we start to achieve success. The main issue is that with DSLRs there’s a whole new set of tools and techniques to learn and most of those are practiced with Photoshop or PaintShopPro on a computer, and not on a camera – if you feel that’s not for you, then you need a digital compact and not a digital SLR.

Finally, if all this talk about levels, colour balance and unsharpening is baffling to you right now, there’s other topics on this forum that have started to touch on digital workflow and I’d recommend you look at those too.

Andy