Black-capped chickadee

[P-A. Fortin]

Obviously a lucky shot, but definitely one of my favorites. This is by far the most common bird here. A subject that I sometimes tend to ignore when shooting. This image will definitely remind me that they still provide very interesting opportunities. I wish I had a faster shutter speed and better depth of field.

Canon 60D, 300mm f/2.8 II (borrowed) + 1.4x, ISO 640, 1/1250, f/5. Speedlite 580 ETTL @ EV -3 with better beamer. Perch is a setup. White balance and saturation/contrast adjustments in LR4. NR and very light sharpening (the 300 2.8 II is amazingly sharp) in CS5. Toned down a bright spot in the upper left corner.



As usual, every comment welcome and appreciated.

[Raybel Robles]

Hello,

A very interesting shot I must say and composition. I am not using my editing monitor but from this one it seems to be a bit of a heavy crop or the photo was heavily underexposed and a lot recovered via post processing? There seems to be a bit of a high noise considering you didn't use a high ISO.

[P-A. Fortin]

Not that much of a heavy crop no (well, depends on one's standards obviously ). About 72% of the original so there is still about 12-13M pixels. Exposure was barely untouched from the original. It was late in the afternoon though so lighting conditions were not optimal.

I ran NR on the background but not on the bird. I usually avoid doing that in fear of losing detail. Maybe I should consider at least running some light NR on the bird anyway?

[Jeannean Ryman]

What a great capture! I love the composition, wing spread, and eye contact. I don't see much noise in the bird, but another noise run through on the background wouldn't hurt. Very nice photo!

[Cheryl Arena Molennor]

I love these little guys and they are a challenge to shoot. I like the birds pose as well as the cool fuzzy perch and clean bg. Alittle noise reduction on the bg would improve this image IMO

[Jeff Cashdollar]

PA,..

Nice techniques increasing ISO to support the shutter what was the distance to the subject. The flash might be a bit heavy (as you might know BB adds +2 stops). Detail is alright considering the subject was in motion and I love the extended wings.

I really like the composition, very original and compelling the type of picture that gets attention. It combines color (flowers/perch) gesture (subject movement) and form,..very nice!

[P-A. Fortin]

Thanks Jeannean, Cheryl (good to see new faces drop by ETL!) and Jeff for the comments.

Distance to subject was just above 6.4 meters. I can tell because I had problems focusing on this branch because I had the limiter switch (2.5m-6.4m) on before taking this image.

Flash was -3 which is the lowest I can set while in ETTL mode. Maybe I should consider taking off the BB when I reach this value?

[P-A. Fortin]

Flash was -3 which is the lowest I can set while in ETTL mode. Maybe I should consider taking off the BB when I reach this value?

Just in case this question was missed, I'm digging it up. I'm really interested to hear what others have to say about it.

[Diane Miller]

Lovely image, but the light is a little flat, especially on the lovely and unusual perch.

When using flash at a setup, I get away from flat light by moving the flash off-camera (using a connection cord, or triggering with a MicroSync for greater separation distance) and put a large translucent diffusion screen about halfway between the flash and the subject. The screen should be large relative to the subject -- about 18" across for maybe 2-3 ft away -- in order to get softly feathered shadow edges.

I set the flash on M and experiment to find the right power. In TTL mode the exposure is calculated with a low power pre-flash which often spooks the bird into a jump -- which might be what happened here.