Can't beat this eye contact!

[Colin Knight]

Not the bird, but the spider! I've included a 100% crop below so you can see the spider looking back at you. One bird, three eyes staring you down. Not bad. :D

I was shooting these guys today as they flew on to the perch, so the technical details are commiserate with that. I think tomorrow I'll try some custom functions so I can quickly switch from "bird in flight" mode to "bird on branch" mode.

This is a 50% crop.

1/3200 sec, f/6.3, ISO 1250, 7D, 500mm, manual everything.

http://www.pbase.com/clknight/image/123887400/original.jpg

[Colin Knight]

http://www.pbase.com/clknight/image/123891560/original.jpg

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Cool to see the spider's eyes, too. Head angle and BG look good, too. It seems you could have lowered the ISO and I would crop a tad off the right to get the bird out of the center.

[Colin Knight]

Thanks for the suggestions, Axel!

[Ryan Schain]

Nice eye contact, cool behavior to catch and nice perch and BG.

Did you selectively sharpen the bird, or did you sharpen the whole image? I 100% agree with Axel that ISO 1250 was overkill here, hence the noise in the background. The noise also looks a little like it has been sharpened as well?

[Colin Knight]

Make sure you check the original post. I was set up for them flying on to the branch, which required high shutter speeds and ISO. Today, I set up a separate custom function with appropriate settings for birds at rest. This allows me to toggle between the two very quickly in manual mode.

The 100% crop is sloppily made, sharpened only so you could see the spiders eyes.

The full image has sharpening applied to the bird only.