Tufted Titmouse

[Edward Arthur]

Well, it dropped its crest just before I snapped and then flew off. Happy to get what I did of this little critter.



Canon 6d and 80-200mm f/4 + 2x TC
400mm 1/400 f/5.6 ISO 1600
HH and manual focus
Bright early evening light filtered through trees
LR5 for crop, highlights/shadows/blacks
Topaz Denoise and Detail in PS

I know the trend is to crush/smear the BG but I like the bokeh here. YMMV.

C&C welcomed.

[Diane Miller]

Cute!! Sounds like they are as active as our Oak Titmice -- hard to stop. I like the light, BG and environment -- maybe could use a little more room on the left is you have it.

Manual focus seems like it would reduce your chances for a sharp subject. I think most people here would try to get a single focus point on the head, probably in AI Servo, so small movements are compensated for, but One Shot can work well if you shoot enough to catch the times it doesn't twitch. It looks here as though the focus fell slightly in front of the face, on the branch. Hitting focus exactly can take an image to a higher level.

I'm not one to obsess about a little noise in the BG (I remember film) but noise reduction there is very subtle and wouldn't change the nice bokeh. In fact, the NR programs I most often use (Nik's Dfine, Neat Image and Topaz DeNoise) rarely need to be masked to the BG for a sharp initial capture.

[Doug West]

Yep, those Titmice are tough. Even with AF, took me awhile until I finally captured one
that I liked. Turns out that happened in Texas vs from where I live, Ohio :)

The only other thing I would add is to remove that leaf in the upper right hand corner.

BTW, just saw you captured this at 1/400. That's still pretty good for these little
boogers.

Doug

[Edward Arthur]

Thanks folks. I'm slowly learning to look at my shots more critically. Diane's eyes are better than mine because I really had to lean in and squint a bit to see the missed focus -- even though my mantra is: if the subject has eyes, focus on them or the one closest to you.

Doug, that leaf bothers me too. I might play around brushing it out but with the bokeh it could turn out a mess. Good pp practice though.

I have a brand new piece of Canon 400mm L glass arriving in time for the long weekend. I'll see if a modern AF prime works more in my favor. (Of course the answer will be yes and I'll have to keep it!)

[Diane Miller]

Cloning out that leaf is good practice. It is not difficult, although some of the immediate detail near it may have to be re-structured.

I may not be right about missed focus -- hard to be sure here. You can tell from a 1:1 (100%) view of the original full-res file. You'll soon learn what is tack sharp and what isn't.

[Edward Arthur]

Ok, same image. Re-cropped to add space on the left and remove the leaf, brushed out new distractions, stronger Denoise setting overall, masked out the bird and re-adjusted Topaz Detail and added a little Focus Magic to boot.

[Diane Miller]

Yes, much better image quality, but the crop does feel a bit tight now. If there is more on the right and left in the original, that would be interesting to compare. It's always a quandary, to maximize pixels on the subject or present more environment.