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View Full Version : Acorn Woodpecker in the Wild



Gus Hallgren
01-20-2008, 08:24 AM
Hi, Photographed in Madera Canyon, AZ , at 5500' level. 1/17/2008 10:04 AM using Olympus E-510 IS, Zuiko 70-300 1:4-5.6 ED (140-600 equiv) Hand Held at full Focal Length 300mm, AP 1/200 F8, Auto WB, EV 0.00. Cropped, Resized ,Sharpen Edges, Hand held sitting down. Beautiful sunny morning. Gus

Judd Patterson
01-20-2008, 09:02 AM
Gus, this is a beauty...both the bird and the photograph. I think this would be even better backing off just a bit and allowing the bird to have more room in the frame. So often we are intent on getting in as close as possible that we can crop a bird too tight. Hand-holding a big lens like this at 1/200 is quite a feat. This looks fairly good as far as sharpness, but I think that either a tripod (preferable!) or opening up your aperture a bit more perhaps f/6.3 would have given you the shutter speed you needed to pull off an even crisper image. I'm just offering a few suggestions, but keep in mind that you should be REALLY proud of this image! Well done!

Gus Hallgren
01-20-2008, 09:29 AM
Hi Judd, Thanks for your comments. Agree with you about the crop & tripod and appreciate the tip about opening the aperture. Gus

Axel Hildebrandt
01-20-2008, 10:30 AM
Adding to Judd's comments, there seems to be some motion blur. Another option would have been a higher ISO. I can't find information on that in your original post.

Gus Hallgren
01-20-2008, 11:49 AM
Hi Alex, Thanks for looking . . . . I was using ISO 400 . . . Gus

George DeCamp
01-20-2008, 05:29 PM
Hey Gus!

What a sweet bird, nice colors and good technique especially for hand holding it. Agree with the previous posters a tripod and a higher shutter speed would help here. Also I think a bit more room around the bird would help the overall composition.

You sure are on the right track, keep them coming.

David Dilworth
01-22-2008, 05:46 PM
Great photo, Gus. I'll echo Judd's observations and add just one thing - if I had processed this photo I would hit it once with sharpening, selected the bird, reversed the selection and use noise reduction on everything but the bird. My telephoto is a monster and I don't get crisp photos without my tripod - but then I'm an old geezer. Good work.

Peter Hawrylyshyn
01-22-2008, 10:05 PM
Gus -
Nice bird which i wish we had up here
Just a quick comment on David's suggestion - - IMHO sharpening a noisy BG is self-defeating
Using layers it's better to select/mask the bird - use noise reduction on the BG, invert the selection and just sharpen the bird as needed.
Just a thought
Keep them coming

Gus Hallgren
01-22-2008, 11:41 PM
Hi folks, Thank you, I appreciate all your suggestions, and will try to get a better photo that requires only slight post editing the next time. What perked it up slightly for me was making 5 adjustment layers>Curves & tweaking the indiviual colors. Should make more effort to use my tripod . . .till next time. Gus