Cape May Warbler

[Joe Brown]

http://joebrownphotography.net/images/cmwabler.jpgCanon 1D MK IV, 300mm 2.8, 1.4TC,
f/5.6, 1/250. +0.33EC, ISO 125

Cropped and dof increased by selecting bg and applying blur. Resized and sharpened.

http://joebrownphotography.net/images/cmwarbler.jpg

Joehttp://joebrownphotography.net/images/cmwabler.jpg

[William Malacarne]

Joe

Good job on a nice looking bird. I won't say it would be better than what it is, but I would like to see it with a vertical crop. You could have used a higher ISO and gotten a faster shutter speed. Was this on a tripod?

Bill

[Kerry Perkins]

Hi Joe, nice capture and a lovely bird. Good head angle and color balance. The red channel is clipped in the yellow areas, something that has to be watched very closely in the processing. The white areas are over-exposed and the entire image could be taken down a notch in exposure. I agree with Bill about the crop, and if it were mine I would crop from the right as well as the left. If you have the bird this large in the frame it makes sense to limit the other elements, especially given that the perch goes very out of focus in the upper left corner.

It would be great if DOF could be increased by blurring the bg, but it isn't quite that easy. :c3: I don't know what your shooting distance was here, but you should have had a pretty decent DOF. I can't really make out much critical focus in the image, which usually indicates camera or subject movement. At 1/250sec it would be easy to have either or both be a factor.

[Joe Brown]

Thanks Bill and Kerry for your comments. Based on your feedback I have reprocessed the image. This is a pretty significant crop. The bright area on the bird's neck is a problem. Using the digital colour meter as suggested by Kerry in his sticky I have tried to control the red channel clipping. I have reduced the exposure and burned the area. On this version I did not blurred the bg.
The shot was taken handheld.

Joe

http://www.joebrownphotography.net/images/cmwarbler2.jpg

[Kerry Perkins]

Joe, I like the repost - looks good to me! I like the bird bigger in the frame and I don't think it suffered too much loss in IQ with the crop. Very nice composition with this crop!