Red squirrel

[Ivan Ellison]

A trip to the Yorkshire dales where a friend has these in his garden. 08/02/13
Nearly full frame, increased the colour sat slightly, tweaked the exposure, sharpened its body a little but left out the tail and cloned a couple of bird droppings off the stones
Canon 1D mkIV
Canon 500 f4 is ( mk1)
1/500 sec
f 4.5
ISO 640

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Ivan, nice looking 'Red' with a great inquisitive look. Like the idea of the dry stone wall, makes a change from the norm. Nice posture and the draped tail avoids clipping issues too. Personally I would have preferred the OOF object colouring across the whole BKG rather than the brighter area on the RHS, but that's in an ideal world. I think you could have dropped the app to f/4 as there's not much between f/4 & f/4.5 and this would have added a fraction more SS as you have the critical sharpness where you needed it. If you crop about 10mm of either side the eye is almost bang on the Rule of Thirds. :w3

BTW this isn't over at Simon P location?

TFS
Steve

[Ivan Ellison]

Thanks for you comments. The bg is mixed as the white is some remaining snow and the dark area is a distant forest. I do not know where Simon P is, this was taken in a friends garden in the dales.

[Rachel Hollander]

Hi Ivan - nice pose and pov. The rocks make a nice perch. I think I would apply a bit of sharpening to the tail although a lesser amount than to the body rather than completely masking it out. I would also try and tone down the bg.

TFS,
Rachel

[Robert Amoruso]

Ivan,

Your biggest problem here is depth of field. With this camera, you could have gone to ISO 1600 and stopped down the lens.

Example and assuming focusing at 30 feet.

f/4.5: DOF = 0.21 ft
f/9: DOF = 0.42 ft
f/11: DOF = 0.54
f/16: DOF = 0.76

f/16 could have increased DOF from under three inches to nine inches getting the tail sharper w/o a lot of BG detail showing up.

[Ivan Ellison]

Thanks Robert for your commemts and examples of dof, I know it is extremely tight on small birds and it is critical to get the focus right, it is obviously the same with mammals . I am reluctant to go too high on the ISO but will try more and also look at ways of decreasing the noise that shows through. This is what I like about the forums,the ability to take note of the feedback and to put it into practice, thanks again.

[Morkel Erasmus]

Love the soft light and the details coming through here.
I don't mind the DOF, but did notice the OOF tail first up. Even f8/f9 would have helped (as Robert pointed out).
Looking forward to more! :5