Purple Finch portrait

[John Chardine]

Purple Finches are currently the most common visitor to my backyard feeders in Sackville, NB. I have quite a nice set-up where I can shoot out of an open window in the back room of the house and the birds don't know I'm there. This of course is a male Purple Finch. I used my 500 mm lens with 1.4x tc to obtain a head and shoulders portrait at almost minimum focus.

I cropped for composition and ran standard processing in Ps.

40D, 500 mm f4, 1.4x tc
capture date: Saturday, May 24, 2008 10:45:32 AM
exposure program: Aperture Priority
ISO speed: 1000
shutter speed: 1/250
aperture: f5.6
exposure bias: +0.0
metering: Pattern
focal length: 700.0

[Mats Honkamaa]

I took my first photos of the purpe finch today actually, really beautiful bird that isnt very common where I live. I really like this bird and this portrait is great. Great sharpness colors and background. Wish I could get this close :)

[John Chardine]

If you were photographing in Sweden it was probably the close relative of the Purple Finch, which is called a Scarlet Rosefinch in Europe. Yours is Carpodacus erythrinus and ours is Carpodacus purpureus. Thanks for the comments. Here Purple Finches are pretty tame so no great challenge to get close.

[Mats Honkamaa]

You're probably right. In swedish its called Rosenfink which can be directly translated to (Scarlet) Rosefinch. But I think it looks excactly like your bird (hey, Im new to this :) ) Maybe I post my photo of it tomorrow even though it is far from this good.

[Arthur Morris]

Hi John, I like the sharpness, the BKGR, and the raspberry sauce!

[Judy Lynn Malloch]

Beautiful portrait with great color and detail and a wonderful clean BG.

[Jim Neely]

Nice and sharp with good composition.

jn

[Steve Maxson]

Great sharpness and color. I like the composition also. Well done.

[David Billingsley]

John,

Very nice in every way - love it.

Question: 40D at ISO 1000 - What post processing did you have do (if any) for such beautiful BKGR results? I have a 40D but haven't shot anything at ISO 1000. Artie has been shooting a 40D at ISO 1000 lately with great results also.

Have a blessed day - dave b.

[Doug Brown]

Question: 40D at ISO 1000 - What post processing did you have do (if any) for such beautiful BKGR results?

The 40D does a very good job at ISO 1000, as evidenced by the preserved feather detail and the low BG noise in this fine photo. The Mark III is even better. I usually run selective NR to the BG, as noise is much more visible in a soft BG than it is in the feathers of a bird. I do my best not to underexpose the image, as detail recovery typically produces noise.

[John Chardine]

Many thanks for all the good comments. When I said "ran standard processing in Ps" in the OP, what that means these days for me is to run selective noise reduction on the BG (using Quickmask) with the Noise Ninja plugin in Ps. If it needs a bit more, I'll run a blur brush lightly over the BG as well. Doug's comments were right on the mark there. Under-exposure results in the low signal to noise ratio in the dark areas of the image and with ISO 1000 you have the volume control on the amp turned up, so you are amplifying the noise as well. Slight over-exposure shooting RAW works very well so long as the highlights are not blown.

Added comment- One other problem with high ISO is low dynamic range, so high ISO works in a relatively flat image like this.