Snipe

[Rob Stratton]

Hi all. Have just started into bird photography this spring, so would appreciate any and all critiques.
This Snipe was in a slough near my farm. The photo was taken with an older Sigma 500mm f/4.5 and a 1.4 converter(I wanted to go a little more "economical" until I see if I can make a go of this). I've since dropped the 1.4 converter as IQ was suffering a little.

Exposure was 1/3000 @ f/4.5, ISO 500. 1Dmkiii, Sigma 500/4.5 and 1.4 TC.

[Michael Gerald-Yamasaki]

Rob,

Greetings. You might consider a bit more depth of field by stopping down some... you have room in the ss for a stop or two. Good exposure and moment, but the dof has the head & beak oof. Some guesses with a dof calculator has your shot at about a half inch dof.

Cheers,

-Michael-

[John Chardine]

Hi Rob- Welcome to BPN! I wish I had had access to BPN when I started out xx years ago!!! You have come to the right place to learn, and we will learn from you when you comment on other images, which we encourage. If you have doubts, read this thread:

http://www.birdphotographers.net/forums/showthread.php/72638-But-wait-I-don-t-feel-qualified-to-critique-pictures!!

Now to your post. I like the posture of the bird and the implied action. You get the impression it's ready to do something. The background is beautiful- creamy and totally non-distracting. The light is seems harsh based on the shadows and does produce a lot of contrast. There are ways of reducing this problem in-camera, with flash, or in post-processing by dodging the dark areas (+ many other ways of achieving the same result). By all accounts (I've never used one myself), the Sigma 500/4.5 is an excellent lens but maybe the tc is having an effect here as you suggest. The image is overall a bit soft and I'm not sure in this case that an extra round of sharpening would work.

The only other thing I would suggest is that if you go with a vertical crop, you should take some off the top to remove the negative space. The other option would be to go with a horizontal or landscape crop.

We look forward to seeing more from you.

[Stan Cunningham]

I think they nailed it above, it's more about your dof than the quality of your lens. You set up perfectly with a very nice background. Unfortunately I often get too excited knowing I'm close enough and don't think about backgrounds which is why posting here has been so helpful.
These folks will help alot so keep posting.

[John Chardine]

I've had another look and I can't see any part of the image that is critically sharp. One thing I forgot to ask is how large the crop was. A heavy crop can cause reduced IQ. If it was a heavy crop, maybe a looser one with some more sharpening would do the trick.

[Rob Stratton]

Thanks to everyone, I can really see what a resource these forums can be!
Michael, I wasn't able to stop the 500 down on my 1Dmkiii or I get the dreaded ERR99. For the next while,though, I'll put it back on my old 1DS, where it is fully functional. (as an aside, has anyone found that TC's don't report on these older Sigma's? With either a Tamron 1.4 or Canon 2xii, I'm still at f/4.5)
John-yes the crop was very heavy, approximately 70%. That's a bad habit i've picked-up from shooting with my 70-200 and making heavy crops. I'll work on that.
There was a lot of derelict fence in the background that I thought distracted too much. You can see in the re-post (which is around a 40% crop) some of that fence. I'm still thinking the fence distracts, but maybe that's just me. I like the landscape crop much better, thanks! Also, I stopped PP at 1 pass of USM and some dodging-Possibly some of the softening was from too much noise reduction?
I read the link you provided on critiquing, so I am off to get started. It seems so awkward to offer advice to people who can capture such great images, but as you say it helps everyone.

[John Chardine]

Hi Rob- If I do NR I almost always mask off the subject because you will get a softening of the image (Topaz Denoise is an exception because it detects detail and reduces the NR in those areas of the image).