Tufted Titmouse

[Jason G. Harrison]

This was a set up shot. I found a bush that the birds (various species) are hiding in as they filter through the yard to the feeders, etc... I set a branch sticking out of it to offer an open perch in hopes they would land on it. I did this in the pre dawn and sat my blind up and waited. Birds were all over, but I guess since it was a new "perch" they did not use it much. As such, I only managed to get about 6 frames of this bird and it flew off. Never had the chance at another that morning. I got to learn to not try and be so close! I sat up at minimum focus distance for my 600VR. That is good and all, but the DOF is so razor thin, unless the subject is perpendicular to the sensor, I can't get the entire or for that matter, much of the bird in focus.

Image taken with a D300, 600VR, f/4, ISO 400, 1/1600th SS. Smaller Aperture would have helped, but even if I were at f/8, it would have only increased my DOF by 1/4" more than it was, which was about 1/4" thick. Slight crop for comp only.

http://www.jasongharrison.com/images/5437_S.jpg

Hope you enjoyed, C&C always welcome.

Jason

[Matthew Studebaker]

Hi Jason. Try shooting your small birds at f5.6 - f8 and I think you'll be much happier with your DOF. It does help to have them perpendicular to the sensor too, and I find not only is that best for the DOF but also usually the best pose anyway. I often toss the others out or don't take them to begin with. Excellent clean bg here, nice detail. One thing to try would be to use a perch (maybe attach it to your feeder) with some leaves or other interesting details to help activate the space in the composition.

[Jason G. Harrison]

Thanks Matthew. I normally shoot several different settings on my subjects and pick the one I like best. I usually start at a given aperture and go from there. I was about to stop down and off it flew. I am comfortable shooting down to about 1/125 ss on a stationary subject so I could have afforded a much smaller aperture and still retained adequate SS.

This was a quick set up to see if it worked. I have some trees with some type of berry on it that I plan to use next. Right now, I am using this one so they get accustomed to it, then before the shoot will add the berry limb. Thanks again...

Jason

[Matthew Studebaker]

Great idea Jason. A berry limb will look great. You could probably put it out days in advance and it will still look nice, especially if you have one end it water.

[Tom Friedel]

Can I change the subject? I dont have much experience with the super telephoto lenses. At your minimum focal length of 6 meters, how close to full frame is this tiny bird? You said 'slight crop'. I recently tried a 300mm f/2.8 with a 2.5 minimum focal lengh, and was suprised how unsuited this seemed for photographing tiny birds. I.e., the bird was only in about 1/4 frame on my 12mb sensor.

tom

[Jason G. Harrison]

Tom,

Perhaps slight was not the correct term. On the full frame image, I used a 3x4 landscape crop and started at the bottom left corner and came up and to the right of the subject to get a nice comp. So the area removed was a little from the top and most off it came off the right side of the frame. I did the math and the actual crop was around 15%. This is not a tiny bird though...keep that in mind, relatively speaking. They measure around 6 1/2" long. For bird photography, i.e. "little" birds, super teles sure help.

Even at my min. focus distance, on birds such as this, requires a slight crop or for smaller birds a larger crop even still. I usually use my 600 with the 1.4tc. This was a rare morning where I did not use it, but had I, the resulting image would have been too tight and I would have needed to move back to give the subject some room in the frame.

Jason

[Tom Friedel]

Thanks for reply,
I occasionally use teleconverters and never noticed that they don't change the min. focus distance. Still seems like you are getting more bird at your min. distance than I was with the 300mm and 2.5 meters. I guess there are some formulas to compute all this,
tom

[Kiran Poonacha]

Beautiful Bird, nice Details, compo and perch.. congrats..

[Jason G. Harrison]

Thanks for reply,
I occasionally use teleconverters and never noticed that they don't change the min. focus distance. Still seems like you are getting more bird at your min. distance than I was with the 300mm and 2.5 meters. I guess there are some formulas to compute all this,
tom

Tom,

Depends on what body your using. If your using a crop sensor or a full frame. If using a crop sensor with a 1.5 factor, the FOV with your 300 at 2.5 meters will just about be the same as my 600 at 16.4 feet. If your using a full frame that changes a pretty good amount and the bird would be much smaller in the frame. TC's don't change the focus distance at all, they simply add more focal length and thus you get more pixels on the subject at the same distance vs. without it. I am by no means an expert and my explanation probably is not the clearest to follow.

Jason

[Jim Crosswell]

Great image of a quick moving subject! I like the HA and eye contact.