Little Robin Redbreast

Taken this morning in my garden,
The weather was once again dull :(

Canon 1DmkIII
300f4 + 1.4 ext
f5.6
1/125
ISO 640
Tripod

Jacqui

Hello again Jacqui. Don't despair with the dull weather, as it actually reduces contrast on your birds and allows you to extend your photography beyond the sweet light at the beginning and end of the days! Beautiful bird and so sharp and clear. I wish that the perch were a bit more focused and I think I'd also crop from the top where there is a lot of extra space. This bird on a nice lichen covered branch would be a wonderful photograph!

Thank you Judd

I agree with the out of focused perch, I had tried f8 but the shutter speed was too slow (I took the photograph in AV mode as I am still very unsure about using Manual mode)

I'm not sure how else I could of made the shutter speed faster any advise would be appreciated :-)

Could I have under exposed or have I got that wrong?

Jacqui

I would have used a higher ISO-speed in order to increase the shutterspeed. I have never tried a 1Dmklll but I imaging that ISO 800 (or perhaps even higher) would be very high quality. I use ISO 800 on my EOS 400D very often and I am very pleased with the result - I suppose your camera is even better. Take a couple of testshots at different ISO-speeds and find out how high you can go on your camera and still get the results you want. I have found out that I can use ISO 1600 if my exposure is spot on or slightly overexposed. I would (almost) never underexpose an image in order to get a higher shutterspeed but instead use a higher ISO and then overexpose slightly as this tends to reduce the noise a bit (you have to be careful not to burn out parts of the bird though). Postprocessing is very important too as you can reduce the noise on the background and in this way make it less noticeable (I use Photoshop CS2 for this but I am sure there are other programs whitch are able to do this).

I like your image a lot by the way but I do agree with Judd on the out of focus perch.:)

Thankyou Anders

I will try out the different ISO settings today :-)

Jacqui