Critique Style Requested: Standard
The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.
Description
Several pair of Rufous and Anna’s Hummingbirds feeding in the garden. They often seem to be fighting either over a perch or perhaps the attention of the males. Difficult to get two of them in the same plane of focus. Thinking of buying a 600mm prime but hard to justify the cost when the Sigma zoom performs this well.
Specific Feedback
Any suggestions are welcome but I am primarily interested in sharpness and crop.
Technical Details
Z8, Sigma 150-600, 600mm, f/9, 1/3200, ISO 9000. Denoise, sharpening and color adjustment in LRC.
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1 Like
Excellent, Daniel. The crop works for me. There is one tiny bit of flower sticking into the bottom of the frame that you might want to remove. As you noted, getting a pair in the same focal plane is really tough and you did a fine job on this one.
Save your money, Dan. An outstanding image. The detail is excellent and the poses with the flared tail feathers is great. Great background as well. Wow!
I agree with Dennis and Allen on this one Daniel. Save your money. This is great! Nice work getting them on the same plane, and good settings to capture the moment.
What they all said!! Just excellent in all respects, including sharpness! A 600 would get you is possibly slightly faster AF acquisition, and the ability to attach teleconverters. (Assuming the Sigma can’t take them?) For my Canon system, even the old DSLR 100-400 was incredibly sharp with a 2X, and that’s equally true with the 100-500 for the new mirrorless bodies. In the right conditions I can handhold 1000mm! And having the zoom is wonderful! My old 600 f/4 is taking up space in a closet – too heavy to move!
Diane, thanks for your input regarding the purchase of a 600mm prime. Nikon makes a 180-600 zoom that I doubt would be an improvement for my hummingbird photography. It sells for $1700. Perhaps faster acquisition and with internal zoom, better balanced. I really enjoy the zoom for framing. The alternative would be the Nikon 600mm f/5.3 PF which is lightweight but about $4500. A friend is letting me use one later this week. This photo and your remarks have moved me toward just being satisfied with what I have.
Dan
Thanks Allen. I am likely going to take your advice.
Good advice, Ed. Your and others comments are persuading me to just be content with a good but not perfect lens.
not only were you fortunate enough to get the two Birds in the same focal point but you also back pretty good wing position. Nice job
I agree with the other commenters remarks, and I’d like to add that I have tons of anna’s hummingbird shots and hardly any rufous pics. I love their look and I covet getting any shots of single ones but I REALLY covet getting such a grand action shot of two, and to have both of them in focus. That’d be dying and going to heaven.
1 Like
Thanks, Dave. I am retired and am fortunate to live where the Rufous migrate every spring and to have a spouse who maintains a beautiful garden. I sit on the porch with my camera every day this time of year and photograph both the Anna’s and the Rufous. Here is a link to a Flickr page I just started. Enjoy looking at the hummers! https://www.flickr.com/photos/200607224@N08/
An excellent comp, but I think that you may want to reprocess the image. Overall, the details are not crisp and feather detail is lacking especially on the heads of the hummingbirds. Going with a super high ISO will kill details. To recover muted detail, try enhancing microcontrast which may crisp it up a bit. Overall an excellent image in terms of subjects and action and tweaking your processing may provide some surprisingly excellent results…Jim
A fine catch Daniel. Great to get both hummers like this with such dynamic poses in the same frame. While both birds are reasonably sharp to my eye, I do see a slight dropoff in sharpness in the bird on the left. Still, a terrific catch of this behavior.
Thanks, JIm. I’ll see what I can do to bring out more detail in the feathers. Isolating each bird in separate masks and adding texture, detail and sharpening may help. I agree that the bird on the left is a little soft but since I have no intention of printing it didn’t bother me much. I shoot with AutoIso and set the shutter speed high enough to try and freeze the wings. The f stop was set to try and get better DOF, so the ISO ended up pretty high.
Congrats on the EP. I’d like to see you get a print from this one after some edits. Wall-worthy for sure…Jim
Jim, thank you for your kind words. I have never printed an image so will need to get educated. Also, I have a similar image taken with a 600mm prime and gently sharpened in LRC. The feather detail is much better than the one I posted. I will post the new one today on NPN
Dan
