Greenfinch

[John Robinson]

Greenfinch on twig above water,
Once the pool os settled its worth putting twigs atc in to get the birds to perch. As I explained though if they want cover they will bathe or drink behind them . You just have to risk it some work some dont.
If you put your branches parallell to the hide you will get birds sitting at you or from you but you can get nice rear views with head turn shots. (MY favourite)
Put your twigs 90% to the hide and you will get the side views. So many ways to play!!
This Greenfinch shows the point. They really are bright birds - the males anyway.

I have to say the D7100 has made a big difference to my photography. (And at £800 !!!)
D7100
Sigma 50-500m
1000ISO
320th @f11
(tried to get the tail in focus as much as possible)
exp--1.33
Neat image
Bibble
70% of frame.
Thanks for comments on last pic.
Cheers
JohnR

[Sidharth Kodikal]

Excellent details on the bird and nice look back pose. Although I tend to prefer a cleaner (read more sterile) look to setup shots, you have a way of making setups look very natural.

[Randy Stout]

John:

Nice description of your setup options. Bird is excellent, right on the edge of being oversharpened for my taste, but on the right side of the 'edge'

I think the bg is just right, recognizable, realistic, but not distracting. Of course it helps to have a colorful bird to attract our eye.

Cheers

Randy

[John Robinson]

Thanks both
The whole thing about "natural"is a debateable point. If we all did them in a completely "natural" situation they would look terrible in "critique " forums - and basically that is the problem. What do we do to be right ?
A difficult one !!!
Randy- no extra shapening but I agree - its probably the D7100 not having the sensor filter maybe (wing feathers area) I have been knocking the sharpening down one bar as a norm
Thanks for looking.
JohnR

[William Dickson]

Nice natural looking image John, maybe the bird a wee bit too sharp imo :S3:

[Greg Oakley]

Nice look-back pose and details John.
I'm seeing a slight blur halo around the head and also some cloning needs some more work in the LH corner and left edge :S3:

[christopher galeski]

nice image John,like the lookback pose and perch,maybe a tad too sharp,TFS.

[John Robinson]

Thanks all
Heres a re work I think the cloneing came ffom changing the position of my name. Whatever I made a right pigs ear of it. The sharpening is an interesting one. The setting on the camera was as always one division below normal. I reckon maybe its the moire effect which some say happens in odd cases because of the lack of a sensor filter.

[Satish Ranadive]

Excellent image.Very nice look back pose, beautiful colors and composition.
Sharpness looks fine on my monitor.

Regards,
Satish.

[Jonathan Ashton]

I like the shot John I like the setting but there is something bugging me. When you sharpen do you select the bird only or do you select the area in the same plane? Thee is a strange junction between the bird's head and back and the background in both shots. The sharpening in the first maybe a tad too much but the second - well it looks patchy to me - what's going on?

[John Robinson]

Hi Jon
Like I said- there is no sharpening on the OP apart from the usual global sharpening after doing the linear downsize for this site which is exactly the procedure I go through when I post every image. There may be some throat twitch which does happen if you fire when they are swallowing- goldfinches do it a lot When I re postd I assumed the reference to over sharpening was referring to the greyer lower wing area. So I ran edge preserving smoothing to that general area, not being too fussy about the boundary . You can see that certain feather groups seem to stick out more than others especially the grey bits. Before I got the camera there were stories about possible moire problems and feather detail was one situation it was possible in. That,s why I have the sharpness set one down in the camera.As I say I should have left it alone and again the only sharpening on the OP is for the site here on the whole image. Just having a quick recap through my birds on here I don't think there's one where I have done extra shapening apart from what I have described above. You cant really put it there if it isn,t there .
John