Maybe then the Shad/Highlight tool is creating too much noise and the sharpening is overdone. Whilst I understand to get sharp images from your new lens, sharpening must be subtle. I personally dont go in for long lenses ;) but using my 70-200 f2.8L I rarely need to give any sharpening at all,even at 2.8

Roy

It is very hard to gauge what the problem is with this gull image. As Stephen has indicated your Post processing is doing so much damage to the gull image. Med jpeg is really hammering the detail with artefacts. I very rarely go below level 10 High jpeg quality if I can help it when posting for web.

Lets focus on a smaller crop area saved at best quaility to start with.

Ok Rob, Here is a crop straight from the Raw file with no processing whatsoever. Saved as a max quality jpeg.

Roy it just does not look in focus.

Was the eye the point of focus ?
Do you have the camera setup with the one central focus point only ?
What focusing mode is the camera setup in ?

Roy, sorry to be a pain, but I'd like the see all of the original image, un-touched by anything except jpg conversion. (Can we ask the mods to relax the rules just this once to allow an over-size file? Or email it to me and I'll host it on my server for a few days while we all ponder it.

The reason I ask is that I'm starting to wonder if you have a focus problem - I'm wondering if the focal point isn't maybe a bit in front of the bird, in which case you may have a problem with the lens. (Damn it, if you weren't half a world away, I'd say let's slip out after work tomorrow and swap lenses for a half hour. See what your lens produces on my 20D and my 100-400 does on your 350D. That would tell us a lot.)

Or maybe a crop of the sand area to the left of the body. That looks like it could be in focus.

Ha, Robski and I cross-posted with the exact same thought.

A couple of other points. This image looks worse than it might because of two things: (1) the gull's plumage is blown out on the throat and head (very difficult not to do this with a brilliant white bird, of course - egrets are always hard work, exposue-wise), and (2) the horizontal surface of the beach is only a little further away than the bird is, so you are in that tricky situation where you can't get the background nice and sharp (not enough DOF is available for that, except maybe at f/16 or f/22), and you can't get the background properly blurred out either (it's not far enough away from the bird at f/5.6, you'd need something like f/2.8 - priced a 400mm f/2.8 lately?).

The reason I mention these two things is that we need to be aware of them before we start drawing conclusions about the image and the lens. By taking note of them, we can mentally discount them (this is supposed to be a test shot, not a competition entry after all) and come to a more balanced view of the image quality, and thus what is going on with your lens.

Having done that, I can only say that something is screwy!

Yup. But why the sand to the left of the bird? That was my thought too - look at the stick. I also thought that the bird's shoulder is a little sharper than it's head, which fits with a focus problem. But it looks as though Roy is shooting through a coke bottle, not a Canon L.

Maybe that's the answer? Roy, do you by any chance have a filter on the 400? (To protect the lens from scratches?) If so, what happens when you take the filter off? Your bird reminds me of the weird and horrible results I got when I bought a set of cheap Hoya closeup lenses as a poor man's macro rig. Used them once, never touched them since.

Tannin,Rob . Yes I have a filter on. Thought I would a) Take the filter off and b) shot the bar code again - on a tripod with my beanbag (full of rice so weighs a ton) on top as a damper. what do you think, is this a good test?
Roy

Here is the tripod shot with damper and no filter taken from about 25 feet,ISO200, 1/1000 at f8. Saved to jpeg straight from RAW. What do you think?