Great Urban Birding: Rufous-tailed Robin!
This is urban birding at its finest. I was at Century Park, a large park deep inside Shanghai. As darkness fell, a rufous-tailed robin (红尾歌鸲, hóngwěi gēqú, Luscinia sibilans) emerged from some thick bushes near an artificial stream. The rufous-tailed robin is a rarely seen passage migrant in Shanghai; it breeds in Siberia and winters in southeastern China and Southeast Asia. It's a treat and a privilege to find this Old World robin anywhere, and a big surprise to find one in the middle of China's biggest city. I dropped to my knees and started shooting. The robin appeared healthy and was not disturbed by my work; in fact, the bird appeared accustomed to the humans passing close by. In this image, the robin approached to just 5.3 m of me. The robin was venturing out onto the grass then disappearing into the cover for a few minutes before reappearing. After each mini-session, I rethought my strategy. At first I decided to use mirror-up with VR off and the shutter-release cable. But I changed that strategy to mirror-up, VR off, and the shutter button. It was taking me too much time to move the lens into position then reach down for the shutter-release cable; and since my speed was always around 1/100, I felt I'd get more shots by keeping my hand on the camera and using the shutter button. I was right. The shots are still sharp, and I had more of them. One thing that didn't change was my aperture. I stuck with F/6.3 throughout the shoot. I don't like to run my ISO much higher than 3200 on my D3S, and I didn't want to go to a narrower aperture, in part because at ISO 3200 my shutter speed would be dangerously slow and in part because I didn't want the blades of grass and little branches behind the robin to come into focus. On the other hand, when the bird came really close, as is the case here, F/6.3 was unable to get the entire bird in focus. Dilemmas. But I'm pleased with the way I handled the situation. Under the pressure of a shy bird, dozens of passers-by gawking (thank you to my assistant, Mrs. Shang, for moving everyone along), and low light, I got the job done.
Device: Nikon D3S
Lens: VR 600mm F/4G
Focal Length: 600 mm
Aperture: F/6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/100
Exposure Mode: Aperture Priority
Exposure Comp.: -0.33
ISO Sensitivity: ISO 3200
Metering Mode: Center-Weight
Subject Distance: 5.3 m
Vibration Reduction: Not used; I'm hardly using VR anymore; VR can prevent very blurry pictures, but it also prevents very sharp ones, too. More trouble than it's worth, in my opinion. Do you agree?
Photoshoppery: Created two layers, one of the bird only, one of the BG. Significant NR on the BG.
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