We had some cloudy-half-bright light yesterday and I went hunting. Didn’t have to go far as a tree about 30 ft from the feeders provides a favored place to hang out for quite a few birds. I love it when they fluff up like this but it always makes me wonder if I’m feeding them too much…
Specific Feedback Requested
All comments welcome!
Technical Details
Is this a composite: No
Canon R5, 1000mm, f/14 (wide open), ISO 1600, 1/60 sec. Sturdy tripod with Wimberley II gimbal head. Red dot sight for aim. Bursts to catch the sharpest image, both for tiny focus irregularities and subject movement. It usually works well. Eye AF is wonderful!!
Very little done in raw conversion. Into PS for Topaz Denoise AI and a couple of OOF branches removed in the BG.
Hi Diane, you have a wonderful portrait of this guy, but I do believe he’s hitting your feeder too often . Nice composition and lighting help to show him off well. Great details in the feathers and a nice sharp eye round it out. We can’t always control our backgrounds as much as we’d like, but I think I would attempt to remove the oof branch on the right; the other one isn’t much of a bother.
This is the sort of sharpness I am working on, and I have already learnt a lot from the Tutorials on your website (I am still using PS 6 so they’re very relevant; many thanks for these) . As for the OOF background branches, why not remove the left-hand one(s) too? Bird and big branch on their own would really stand out then.
A cute little bird in a a very nice setting. I like all the complimentary colors. Both of those branches seem to be bending under the weight of this Junco!
These mirrorless cameras have some big advantages. I am starting to walk around now with the 2X on. And look at the sharpness at 1000mm and 1/60 of a second. Even at f/14 the bg seems nicely blurred. Well done.
A very nice image of this Junco, Diane. The detail is superb which indicates that you had a good sturdy setup with that much lens and that low a shutter speed.
Really nice detail. I find these birds difficult to expose properly, but you did a fine job. I could do without the oof branches, but we don’t always get to choose these things when shooting wildlife, do we? Overall, very nice.
Juncos are such neat little birds. I love to listen to a bunch of the twittering and nattering on while they feed.
So…question, when you say ‘red dot sight’ for aim, do you mean the same sights used on firearms? I think my husband mentioned to me that these were now being used in photography applications.
Thanks everyone! @Kris_Smith, yes, basically the same thing. I have an Olympus EE-1 that fits in the hot shoe flash mount. (Not all cameras would have one.) It needs to be calibrated for the approximate distance, due to parallax – super easy with two dials, and the intensity of the “dot” is adjustable. Since the DOF is so shallow, you often can’t see a bird clearly enough through the viewfinder, so the sight lets you get the target in the center of the viewfinder so you can start to focus.
Thanks for the clarification Diane. I just had a convo w/my husband who is a competitive pistol shooter in his spare time. He has ideas about how to use a red dot sight (probably an aimpoint) for this kind of long-distance photography. Seems like it would eliminate a lot of hunting - both for focus and for the subject when using lenses with a very narrow angle of view (400+ mm). Thanks for the info.
Definitely eliminates a LOT of hunting. You don’t have time to hunt with a subject that might take off any second. But you need to be on a tripod to use it effectively, to keep the aim while your eye goes from the sight to the viewfinder. At shorter focal lengths it may not be that necessary but at long focal lengths (over maybe about 800mm) it is a huge help.
Thanks everyone! I removed the branch, but went back to the layer before some branches on the bottom had been pruned. I think it’s an improvement. I hadn’t realized that I had pruned away the origin of the branch extending behind the bird.
A friend says he looks like he swallowed a tennis ball…
. Nice composition and lighting help to show him off well. Great details in the feathers and a nice sharp eye round it out. We can’t always control our backgrounds as much as we’d like, but I think I would attempt to remove the oof branch on the right; the other one isn’t much of a bother.