Telescopic Hummer

I was playing around in my backyard this afternoon with my 20D mounted on my old telescope. My plan was to put them together to get some shots of the moon, but I thought I'd just try to see what it could do with wildlife. Not too bad.

I couldn't avoid the ugly feeder, so rather than just cropping it out, I morphed it with PB's Circle splash filter. Then I used PB's oil paint filter with all the sliders either maxed out or totally minimized. I painted the bird back in after the abuse. Added a black border.

Canon 20D, 910mm "lens" with fixed aperture of 11, ISO 400, 1/250 SS, manual focus (naturally)

Patti, This is crazy good! I like what you did with the feeder. Very imaginative and fun. I have to get going on that PB.:)

Patti, that's wild and I love the creativity! I really like the way the colors of the little hummer are echoed in the feeder. Fun image!

Hi Patti, Denise and Kerry have used the correct terms of wild and crazy good. This is super imaginative. Your timing must have been perfect to grab this with the equipment set up the way it was. Thanks for sharing.

Patti, this is amazing:) The bird feeder is way cool!

Thanks everyone. Denise, PB is a blast. Go for it. Word of warning though: I found that with CS5, I can't use the keyboard to enter values. I have to use the sliders or it will crash PS every time.

David, I just left the scope aimed at that spot since that's where they seemed to approach the feeder. Then I just hit the shutter when one would come up. The focus was the problem. If they were not in the right spot, I couldn't focus in time.

Cheryl, I think the feeder is a big improvement over the real thing. :D

This is the original with minimal processing - Slight crop, exposure, saturation, sharpened a bit and took out the dust bunnies from that old 20D sensor. That is one ugly Wally Mart feeder, but the hummers like it a lot better than the fancy stained glass one. :confused:

Kerry, those colors just happened to match the bird. Lucky on that one and to tell you the truth, I didn't even notice it until you mentioned it. :o

Patti that is such a huge difference...I'm amazed by work like this and would never thought of doing it.:)

I love the way the "feeder" turned out with PB. That was very creative use of it! I have used it already for backgrounds but haven't posted one yet, where you can tell it. I did use it on the texture for the pink lotus blossom from texture week on two or three duped texture layers but then used twirl too and the effect was muted but you can see it a little. I will post one of the new ones soon. You guys should try it for a background and put the "center" in the center for a symmetrical effect. And yes, I have crashed PB trying to type in numbers. I also wanted to twirl a sunset with a lot of horizontal lines in it, but done with the photo in vertical position which I would rotate back after. No go, crashed 3 times so I gave up. And I had made it only 1000 px wide so it wasn't large.

FYI - A guy in the Canon Yahoo group said they are working on a new version of PB. I hope it will fix some of the issues.

Thanks Jim. It's all trial and a lot of error mixed with some luck with me. I just keep dinking.

Judy, Thanks for that info. I hope they do fix it. I have used the Circle Splash from the center radiating all around for a cool looking background. I wonder what it would look like to use the "tunnel effect" filter (can't remember what that last one is called) after the Circle Splash? The combinations are endless.

Neat image and application, Patti.

Very interesting shot. ;)

Hi Patti, this is excellent. I really like the final result. Very creative and excellent processing.