Antillean Hummingbird

[Fred Canter]

Guess I've lurked enough, it's time to get my feet wet and start improving. Just recently started shooting hummingbirds, so here is one from today.
Nikon D3s, mode: manual, lens: 600mm f/4 VRII, SS: 1/8000, AP: f/4.0, ISO: 1000, flash with Better Beamer, Gitzo tripod with Wimberley head.
Image has been cropped and the white background is from a car parked about sixty yards away. I useed the wide aperture to be certain I had no details in the car.

Antillean Mango Hummingbird
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4103/5090829062_2ff9051a5f_z.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/fdcpr/5090829062/)

[Ivan Sjögren]

An very nice image, the best i seen on this species. Super sharp with exelent details. You did well with the bg taking out the details of the car, nice and different with a white bg insteed of green.
I would like a bit more room to the right, you got some?
Also I can see a small halo around the bird, that should be simple to get rid of, did you sharpen the hole image or just the bird?
Otherwise a very nice image, beautiful bird. TFS

[Fred Canter]

Thanks Ivan for the feedback. Yes, I have more room to the right, I just need to do some cloning and was a little lazy on this shot. I really appreciate the comment on the halo, I had a monitor problem last week and don't know if I have it back to correct or not. The halo seems to be a product of the light conditions as it is present in the raw file and obviously sharpening does pronounce it more. I didn't try to fix it at all due to questioning what I was seeing. In the next few days I'll post some more shots, I've really got to figure out if my monitor is correct now or not. I've done a calibration on it, but it just seems off to me.

[Ivan Sjögren]

Watched your site at flickr and found the image at the tody, stunning capture wath a bird. Looking forward to see more shots from you. Hope you solve your problem with the monitor and you get it working as it should. If not tell me or any one else at this forum and I see wath I can do.

[Fred Canter]

Watched your site at flickr and found the image at the tody, stunning capture wath a bird. Looking forward to see more shots from you. Hope you solve your problem with the monitor and you get it working as it should. If not tell me or any one else at this forum and I see wath I can do.

Thanks for the comment on the tody, that shot took a long time to finally capture. I'm not sure at what point re-posts can be done in this forum but I assume in 24 hours. I've posted an edited version of the hummingbird to flickr, so it's there if you want to see the difference.

[Ivan Sjögren]

Watched it, it's just like I was thinking with the crop. Also there's not as big halo around the bird, so spot on . Great work.
You can make next new post in 48 hours in this forum, if you want to show the new version of the hummer you can put it in a post under this thread. You can as most post one thread in each forum every 48 hours. (You can post as many repost to others threads as you want)

[Fred Canter]

Thanks for the information I was unclear about reposting. Here is the other version, will check later as I really need to get focused on some of my real work.

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/fdcpr/5093978890/" title="Antillean Mango Hummingbird by FDCPR, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4130/5093978890_be6f9fcba4_z.jpg" width="640" height="378" alt="Antillean Mango Hummingbird" /></a>

[Johan Kruger]

Wow Fred, you NAILED this. Especially love the repost. I dont think ive seen a hummingbird shot before where the wings aren't blurred. Extra space on left makes a huge difference. Very well done.

[Fred Canter]

Thanks for the information I was unclear about reposting. Here is the other version, will check later as I really need to get focused on some of my real work.

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4130/5093978890_628259e64d_z.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/fdcpr/5093978890/)
Not sure why the link appears broken, but here it should be fixed.