Bullfinch (Pyrrhula pyrrhula)

[Jonathan Ashton]

Taken from my back garden hide, sunflower seed hearts used for bait.

Olympus E-M1X
Focal length in 35 mm film : 601.0mm
Exposure mode : Manual exposure
Exposure compensation : 0.0 EV
ISO Sensitivity : 1600
Shutter : 1/2500 sec
Aperture : F6.3

ACR/TopazDNAI/PSCC

[David Roach]

Fantastic EXP and SH right where it needs to be. Love the motion blur to add to action and killer BG. Only wish perch was in DOF (love lichens). Love this canvas overall. TFS

[Paul Burdett]

Cool shot Jonathan. Really like the composition here, perch, HA, BG and sense of movement in the wings. Just wish the feet were more in focus...but I'd be happy to see one in my back garden! TFS

[Brian Sump]

Jon, I like the frame in terms of composition and colors. I am jealous of lichen covered perches as we're pretty arid here in Colorado.

The head looks to be the most critically sharp portion and that's excellent. Great to see some fine feather detail even in the primaries.

I too would love to have seen the branch and even a bit of the feet in focus. Possible you could have stopped down aperture and bump SS 1-2 stops?

Might also suggest taking a look at a bit more sharpening if you like.

[annmpacheco]

Such beautiful colors and great sharpness on the head. Added interest is the flick of the wings. would wish for you to have enough SS to freeze the fancy footwork, keep at it! The chartreuse lichen is gorgeous against the green BG

[Jonathan Ashton]

Thanks for the feedback everyone, glad you liked it. During this brief session lasting 20-30 min I actually got a little light but it was very brief and sometimes only part of the perch was illuminated, I varied shutter speeds from 1/1250 to 1/3200, I have not been using the 300mm prime lens for these garden perch images previously, tending to use the zoom and the TC. What has been interesting has been the use of Auto AF/Tracking & AI bird identification along with Procapture. One the useful features of this setting is that I can point the camera at a particular position on the perch and just wait for a bird to appear and the chances are that the bird's eye will be in focus (not 100% of times but success rate is good) so when the light is very limited in spread I can move the camera accordingly. (You may have noticed the left side of the image is brighter than the right but I have evened it up somewhat).

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Jon, nice to see you have some BF in the garden.

I would go with the prime and ditch the TC to retain better IQ and based on this, a faster SS, although you are to a degree limited with how far you can push the ISO with the kit. WB is spot on, although opening it up a tad with some additional USM adds the necessary sharpness missing in the post, you get to see more of the finer plumage. Looks like FP was more on the 'joint' of the wing. I just wonder if the set up needs to be a tad lower to you? Did you do any cloning around the larger part of the lichen towards the RHS, looks odd, likewise the area behind it???

TFS
Steve

PS Just dropped you a line.

[John Mack]

The pose is nice. Perfect head angle here as well. Too bad the perch wasn't more in focus. The bullfinch would look like it's on a tight rope.

[Jim Crosswell]

I like the wing position, HA, composition, BG and perch. Nice image Jon.

[Stu Bowie]

Hi Jon, lovely colours on this visitor, and I like the swept back wing position. Always good to see a lichen covered perch.