American Redstart

[Rene Quenneville]

Another picture of a very small bird. We always find them in tight branches.
I think I should have used more fill flash in order to reveal the dark feathers better. I exposed in order to avoid burning the orange stripes. Although I see no clipping in the blacks on the original histogram, there is not much details available in the black plumage. Do you have any tricks in such situations?

Nikon D300
Sigma 120-300 f/2.8 wit 1.4X @ 390mm
1/800 s
f/8
400 ISO
fill flash with BB @ -1 2/3 stop

[Peter Hawrylyshyn]

Rene
Look at the RGB histogram - - it shows where you lost the data

[Tony Whitehead]

Shadows/Highlights is worth a play, Rene - there is quite a bit of detail extractable even on the web jpg.

[Tobias Hayashi]

The black levels on the original one posted look fine to me. Composition is a bit too balanced towards the top in my opinion, and maybe a bit too much noise removal/ sharpening. A stunning bird!

[Juan Aragonés]

I agree with Tobias about the composition. Blacks doesn´t looks bad but I agree that a bit more information can be extracted from the dark areas. I like the eye contact of this cool species a lot René ;)