Finch (Cheated, at a feeder)

[Bruce DeBonis]

I cheated. My feeder is about two inches away, I did some light cropping, and some minor tweaking of the RAW in LightRoom.

C&C appreciated. I calibrated my monitor but I think these look too contrasty and dark on other monitors... no/yes?
By the way, my mother already pointed out the branches do not look natural because some are facing down. Thanx mom. I worked hard on this and I still blew an important detail. Live and learn.

I have been getting tons of purple and house finches this year along with pine siskins.... someone told me it was due to few pine cones in Canada. I think this is a house finch though. This was the first year I ever saw a purple finch and last year only saw siskins once. Nice treat this year.

Bruce in Philly

www.TravelThroughPictures.com

ISO 400, f/5.6, 1/500 sec, 5D MkII, Canon 500mm f/4 IS, EOS Utility for tethered shooting

[Daniel Cadieux]

Yes, this is a House Finch. Nice comp and perch, and the BG looks good (except for that extra branch running behind the subject). Very good details. I do not think the image is too contrasty but it is a tad dark though. I wouldn't mid a bit more room below as there is not enough of the leaves peeking in at bottom.

P.S. Using a feeder is not cheating...only another tool at your disposal...

[Bruce DeBonis]

the BG looks good (except for that extra branch running behind the subject).

Thanx Daniel,
Yes, I don't like that branch. I put it there to be a "focus stop" for my 500mm so it wouldn't hunt so much. Getting the 5D Mk II autofocus to nail the bird was near impossible. I did get rid of the "focus stop" by changing the distance of the camera to the bird, and moving the aim of the lens to get the autofocus points to nail the branch if it didn't find the bird.
Regarding the leaves under the branch, I agree with you again... believe it or not, I had it there but the branch twisted as I shot over a few hours. Notice the leaves along the bottom.
All in all, moving things around by literally an inch at a time changed focus, composition, and bird behavior.
Thanx for the feedback
Bruce

[Daniel Cadieux]

You're welcome.

The 500mm lens shouldn't be hunting that much really, even on a 5D II. Not sure which AF settings you have, but pre-focussing on the perch itself should get the 500mm to snap nicely onto the subject once it perches on it. Do you have the distance limiter set to near for this setup?

[Gerald Kelberg]

Hi Bruce,

That is a nice looking finch - different to the ones we get over here! Nice pose, sharp and clear - nice image! Agree that branch needs to go!

May I suggest that, if you don't do it already - and I suspect you don't - you should try setting up your 5D MkII for 'back-button focus'. Separating the focus and the shutter press may be a better way of overcoming the lens searching issue that you are having. Check out the "Rear Focus Tutorial" on Artie's blog - all you need to know!!

Regards,

Gerald

[Bruce DeBonis]

Thanx again,

Daniel, yes I had the limiter on. I really don't know why I had problems. It was really kind of luck. I would shoot a test shot without the bird to confirm my exposure as the sun/clouds would vary and without a bird, the thing would focus to its limit, hunt, and then I would get the error. For the next shot, a bird would land (they only stayed there for a few seconds before hoping up onto the feeder), I would shoot and most of the time, it would grab the bird but not always. So...... As you recommend, I re-aimed the camera down a bit so the bottom sensor was hitting the perch.... again, sometimes it worked others not. If I aimed the camera down too far, I would crop the top off of some birds. I was trying to get the camera as close as possible so I didn't have to crop much but when I did that, focusing became a problem. Oh well..... I tried a ton of tweaks and some worked better than others.

Gerald: Thanx for the comments. In normal shooting, I always use the back button... love it and it really is the way to shoot.... however, here I was using tethered shooting meaning I had the camera connected to my computer in the house. When you do this, you have to activate focusing via the shutter. I could have prefocused and then set to manual, but that does not always work either as the depth of field is so darn thin and the birds land and position themselves in an infinite number of positions. Focusing was the biggest challenge of all for this primarily due to the thin DOF, my desire to get the camera as close as possible to fill the frame, and the far background I wanted to have it creamy. Most of the shots I took did not have that focus backstop branch. Check out my blog as I have a ton with different perch arrangements.

Thanx all again,
Bruce

[Daniel Cadieux]

A-ha, I missed the part about tethered shooting...I've no experience with that. Do you find AF as fast this way? It sounds like you cannot focus/recompose this way and I can see how you would struggle photoghraphing this way compared to being outside and handling the gear with your own hands. Tethering is pretty cool, but for bird photography it certainly is not the most effective way...try sitting in a blind in your backyard, a pop-up blind is good enough, and for many backyard birds you don't even need ablind, just being motionless is often good.

Thanks for the additonal details!

[Henry Domke]

To me the image appeared a bit flat. I opened it in Photoshop and looked the histogram showed that the white point could be moved in.
I made the adjustments shown in the attached screen shot.
Not sure if you like it better, but it seems better to me.

[Bruce DeBonis]

To me the image appeared a bit flat. I opened it in Photoshop and looked the histogram showed that the white point could be moved in.
I made the adjustments shown in the attached screen shot.
Not sure if you like it better, but it seems better to me.

Boy that is better. What do you mean when you say "moved in"?

Thanx
Bruce

[Henry Domke]

What do you mean when you say "moved in"?

To get the full tonal range I pulled the white point down from 255 to 214.
See the attached screen shot for the adjustment layer before and after.
This was on an Adjustment Layer in Photoshop CS6.

[Bruce DeBonis]

Cool, I don't use CS6, but I did use LightRoom. Is this the equivalent of the "Whites" slider? If so, I will try moving it to the left just a bit... I will give this a try later this evening.... no time now. Maybe I can grab the right boarder of the histogram and slide it left..... hmmm....

Bruce in Philly

[Henry Domke]

Is this the equivalent of the "Whites" slider?

There are several ways to do this in LR4. Yes, you can drag the "whites" slider to the right to set the white point as I have done in PS.
However it is usually better to accomplish most of this kind of work with the Exposure and Contrast sliders.

Have you watched Jeff Schewe's tutorials on LR from the Luminous Landscape website? I highly recommend them.
Introduction & Advanced Guide to Lightroom 4
http://store.luminous-landscape.com/...roducts_id=286

[Marina Scarr]

It seems you are off to a good start with your setup. Nice pose on the bird. Colors in repost look even better. Looking forward to more. Agree that setups are NOT cheating!!!