House Sparrow

[William Malacarne]

This was taken in the backyard.

Camera: Canon 1D MKII N
Lens: Canon 400mm f/5.6 w/1.4 tc
Time: 08:32:07
Focal length: 540mm
Exposure Program: AV
ISO: 800
Shutter: 1/800 sec.
F stop: f/8.0
EC: 0
Metering Mode: multi spot
Hand Held

[Gus Cobos]

Unusual capture, would like to see a better head angle. The eye is a little soft.

[Doug Brown]

Hi William! The angle of the photo is a little steep, and I think it made it more challenging to focus on the eye. Your focus is more center of mass (the body). Getting the eye sharp is critical to a good bird photograph. Here's a repost with extra sharpening, and I also increased the brightness of the bird. How do you like it?

[Alfred Forns]

Great suggestion and repost by Doug !!! Very important to zero in on the eye !!!

[William Malacarne]

Thanks for the comments.

Doug how did you do sharpening? I had done an eye select and did USM at 200, 0.3, 0. Then after sizing I did a USM at 100, 0.3, 0 on the whole image. No noise reduction was done on this at any time.

Thanks Bill

[Harold Davis]

doug did an excellent job with the sharpening!! my .02, it's a little too big in the frame for me. would like to see some more canvas all around. like the bg. compliments the bird real well.

[Doug Brown]

Doug how did you do sharpening?

I did two things. I used smart sharpen on the bird (slider set to about 90 if memory serves me). Then I sharpened the eye and maybe the head feathers using PhotoKit's Creative Sharpener brush (narrow edge 1).