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Thread: Another Golden-crowned Sparrow

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    Default Another Golden-crowned Sparrow

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    Well, I can't be certain it's a different individual from the one I posted a couple of days ago, but it was a different shot, from today. There are quite a few visiting our soup kitchen. Same issue as the previous post, with some distance between the plane of the breast and face. The face was slightly softer so I did a Nik Sharpener later and masked it to just the face, to balance them nicely. They don't sit still for careful aim with a focus sensor.

    (Do birds have a face? Or is it just a head?? And never sure about beak vs. bill. But at least I can tell a pigeon from a sparrow now.)

    Canon 5D Mk III, 600mm II + 1.4X III. Big Gitzo with Wimberley II. ISO 800, f/11, 1/250 sec. (Even thinner ice here than the last post, at 1/500!) Full frame. Soft light with some clouds. Basic LR adjustments then to PS CS6 for some careful sharpening (Nik) masked to the head.

    C&C always appreciated.

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    BPN Member dankearl's Avatar
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    Diane, this is better than the first.
    Since this is FF, why don't you take off the TC?
    You are losing a half inch of DOF from 800 to 600.
    It seems that with the low ISO and 5diii, you could easily crop a bit.
    Just a thought.
    Last edited by dankearl; 03-01-2014 at 11:44 PM.
    Dan Kearl

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    Absolutely superb image with very nice IQ. Great fine details,beautiful color pallet, nice BG and composition.

    Regards,
    Satish.

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    Sweet BG colors and look back pose.

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    Nice look back pose with great IQ & BG.

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    Macro and Flora Moderator Jonathan Ashton's Avatar
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    Lovely exposure and excellent detail, I like the pose.

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    Lifetime Member Marina Scarr's Avatar
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    Nice soft light on this one, Diane, and expertly processed. If there were any way you could have backed up for this capture, it would have helped with the high angle.

    As for the beak and the bill, I pose this question to a biology friend of mine. A bill (like on a baseball cap) is what you might find on a platypus or waterfowl. A bill is for all other birds. However, they are obviously interchangeable in today's lingo.
    Marina Scarr
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    BPN Member Bill Jobes's Avatar
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    Exquisite detail and a beautiful bird, Diane.

    It appears the sharpest focus is on the pin feathers on the chest.

    If your focus point was on the eye, perhaps a micro focus auto-adjustment would correct a front-focus issue.
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    Thanks for the comments, everyone, and for the clarification, Marina. I'm new to birds and I'm always afraid of sounding like someone who's new to birds...

    Actually the angle wasn't very high -- the perch was probably a foot above the center of the lens and ~ 18 ft away. It does look higher, though -- good point that I hadn't noticed. I have the camera height set so I can park on a stool and wait quietly for the birds to do their thing. I could find a higher perch for myself, though -- will try that -- thanks!

    I have several options for focal length, but all have the same DOF if I change my distance to the birds to give the same size in the frame. The bare 600 has a 15 ft MFD, which makes at least a 50% crop necessary for a sparrow. I can add extension tubes and get closer, but not quite close enough for the magnification shown here. If I add the 1.4X I can get the shot above at about 18 ft. The calculated DOF for 600mm at 15 ft. is the same as 840mm at 21 ft. or 300mm at 7.5 ft. Using 840mm lets me get close enough for smaller birds such as goldfinches and gives the medium-sized ones a little more breathing room.

    At the greater distance, so far I've had success sitting quietly instead of hiding in my blind. That gives me more flexibility to move the perches to different BGs and lighting. Some birds may prefer me to be hidden -- will have to determine that the hard way I guess. I can always throw the camo cover over the camera and me instead of draping it on the blind.

    I do need to try to get more small birds truly in the wild, but my deck is closer to a coffee pot and farther from any enforcement agents.

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    Bill, missed you post while I was composing my reply -- thanks for commenting. You're right about where the focus was, but not the fault of the focus system. I've done the LensAlign thing with all my lenses and the 600 is right on the money, with and without TCs. The bird was twitching and the 5D3 isn't the fastest at focus, especially with a big lens. I use back-button focus and hold it in so AI Servo is active, but it doesn't always keep up with small changes in position, and I'm even slower recomposing in-camera and way slow moving the focus point. So it's hit or miss. I need to set up a little farther away from this perch so I have more leeway to focus and recompose.

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    BPN Member vishaljadhav's Avatar
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    I like the over all feel, i may like more on the left of the frame
    Looks like the bird was very close which shows in the DOF
    Spot on exposure

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    BPN Member Bill Jobes's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Diane Miller View Post
    Bill, missed you post while I was composing my reply -- thanks for commenting. You're right about where the focus was, but not the fault of the focus system. I've done the LensAlign thing with all my lenses and the 600 is right on the money, with and without TCs. The bird was twitching and the 5D3 isn't the fastest at focus, especially with a big lens. I use back-button focus and hold it in so AI Servo is active, but it doesn't always keep up with small changes in position, and I'm even slower recomposing in-camera and way slow moving the focus point. So it's hit or miss. I need to set up a little farther away from this perch so I have more leeway to focus and recompose.
    Thanks for the clarification, Diane.

    One thing I do in my setup when concentrating on perched birds, is to lock the focus point sensor at or near the top of the frame. That usually allows for pretty good composition, and I find, at least for me, it increases the success ratio for in-focus eyes.

    I do that whether I'm framing portrait, or landscape.
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    I've done that, too, sometimes. In this session I tried twp other approaches and I'm actually not sure which one was going on in this exposure. First I was trying to be more precise, which worked against me, because with the bird large in the frame I wasn't able to move the focus point fast enough to catch a quick over-the-shoulder glance or other quick movements. Then I tried setting all focus points to let the camera decide. That worked well when the face was in the same plane as the breast, but didn't work well when the head was farther back, as here.

    So I think I should quit trying to refine things and go back to your method of setting the top center point and moving a little farther back so I have some leeway to recompose.

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