Red Winged Blackbird

[Warren Spreng]

One of my favorite local birds. I always get a few that hang out by the feeder and sing in the trees while awaiting their turn. They are pretty skittish and any movement causes them to scatter while the other birds just kind of ignore me! This one was waiting his turn at the feeder so gave me a little more time to catch him in a decent pose. Canon T3i, Tamron 150 - 600mm at 600mm, f/6.3, 1/1000, ISO 800 handheld.

Shadows raised in LR, cloned out some random OOF branches, applied mild sharpening to the jpg after saving prior to posting per Diane's suggestion in another thread.

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[Greg Payne]

Nice. Good look to the eye of the bird.

[Warren Spreng]

Nice. Good look to the eye of the bird.

Thanks Greg, one of the few times I haven't had to play with an image to bring up the eye catch!

[Diane Miller]

Very nice! Great sharpness and light. Is this what I've seen called a Tricolor Blackbird, with the light band outside of the red/orange area?

You might compare with a little less bringing up the Shadows, or maybe leaving the Shadows as they are and adding a mid-contrast curve. Lots of options there -- I'm not saying one is better, just tossing out ideas -- which you may already have tried. Darks look just a little thin -- easily compensated for in LR/ACR, with lots of options to balance the various levels of darks.

[Warren Spreng]

Very nice! Great sharpness and light. Is this what I've seen called a Tricolor Blackbird, with the light band outside of the red/orange area?

You might compare with a little less bringing up the Shadows, or maybe leaving the Shadows as they are and adding a mid-contrast curve. Lots of options there -- I'm not saying one is better, just tossing out ideas -- which you may already have tried. Darks look just a little thin -- easily compensated for in LR/ACR, with lots of options to balance the various levels of darks.

Thanks Diane, from what I have read the Tri-colored has a white border on the red rather than the yellow border on the wing. The Tri-colored is mostly in California which could be what you are seeing although the Red Winged Blackbird is more common.

I agree about the blacks, i'll play with that a little more, I wanted to be sure that some of that buffy color on the back showed up. I hope I can catch one in a display so that the red shows up. They don't sit still very long so I'll be lucky if I get one like that with continuous shutter mode!