Least Flycatcher

[Jack Backs]

It's been a couple of weekends of poor weather. I decided to go out on an overcast day regardless. Didn't have much luck finding any warblers but I did run across this migrating Least Flycatcher.
I don't see them that often and they seem to prefer deeper brush than most flycatchers. I was shooting wide open at what I generally set as my minimum shutter speed for small birds(1/1000s).
The bird sat still for a few seconds and I refocused several times. This image was created by essentially focus stacking three images, head, body, and most of the tail.

D500, 500mmF4VRII, TC-14EIII

f5.6, 1/1000s, iso1600

[greg cowle]

Excellent image, and really cool technique! I have tried stacking on a very slow wildlife specimen, but on a little bird this is terrific. Detail is excellent, I have no idea where the stitching occurs.

[Aditya Sridhar]

This is extremely impressive Jack! Focus stacking on such a small and twitchy subject require great skill! I like the bird's pose and while the perch probably isn't ideal, it could've been far worse. If you burn the bright green OOF highlights, I think they would draw the viewers' eyes far less and make the bird stand out even more. Really well done nonetheless!

[Bill Dix]

A very handsome portrait of this little flycatcher. Great pose with nice HA, good BG. Clever and well executed focus stacking. Well done.

[Jonathan Ashton]

Good thinking in the image construction it resulted very well indeed, regarding the background I would suggest lifting the darker areas slightly.

[gail bisson]

Sweet little bird and pretty neat to focus stack (something I have no idea how to do!)
Nice and sharp with a great BG.
Well done,
Gail

[Krishna Prasad kotti]

Probably first time I have heard focus stacking on bird photography.

Can you provide more information on how you do it ? Did you plan to stack or just took photos and thought of focus staking latter ?

TFS

[Jack Backs]

I'll admit this was an after thought. The bird was quite still for a couple seconds. In these situations I'll generally fire off a few shots and then refocus and fire off a few more. The bird was very close and you just never know if you have the head in focus at the time.
Focus stacking is probably not an accurate term for what I did. I merely opened all three files in Photoshop after synchronizing settings in Bridge. I used the image with the head in focus as the master. I then just used the clone stamp tool to clone the sharp areas of
the other two images over to the master. I didn't use layers, done "destructively". My son(who's an architect) is generally appalled by my Photoshop techniques. Your question did get me wondering if Photoshop's automated photo stacking would work. I'm not much
of a landscape guy but I have done a few stacked landscape images in the past from vacations in Colorado. I had to go back and watch a Phlearn video. The image came out almost identical. If I was more familiar with the technique it probably would have been faster.
I'll post crops of the three images I used.

[John Mack]

Well the stacking worked out really well. Nice pose and the green background is nice as well.