Singing House Wren

[Dan Brown]

Singing House Wren, Crane Creek,OH. Shoulder stock mounted Nikon D200, 80-400mm VR lens, f8, 1/250sec, exp. comp. +.33, ISO 640, fill flash - SB800 - 2.0 + better beamer. PP in CS3, levels,curves,hue/sat,sel.color. Sharpened with Nik, noise reduced with Noise Ninja. Could be sharper, but I think the throat and bill were moving. ISO 640 doesn't seem to work too well with this D200 (or me?).

Dan Brown,
Sacramento

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Nice singing pose and eye contact. I would decrease the greens a few points and find the OOF branch in the foreground a bit distracting. From what I've seen here, the D300 produces much cleaner images than the D200.

[Doug Brown]

To what Axel said I would add that the head seems a little soft on my monitor. If you had relied more on your fill flash, you could have removed your + exposure compensation (maybe even gone a little negative) and gotten a faster shutter speed. That may have helped with the sharpness.

[Dan Brown]

Thanks for the critiques guys. I would be happy to be mistaken about this, but I don't think that the D200 is capable of a flash sync speed higher than 1/250th? I really like some of the results with the above setup at ISO400 though. I forgot to mention that I was shooting in shutter priority to achieve nice exp on the BG's. I am going to start using a monopod with the shoulder stock when I am in the "warbler stalking mode", maybe I can achieve a little more sharpness that way? We'll see. Dan

[Doug Brown]

Dan, there should be a high speed sync option on the Nikon SB800 flash (Auto FP High Speed Sync).

[Dan Brown]

Wow! Thanks Doug I will check it out! This camera/flash does more than my desktop computer! Dan

[Dan Brown]

Here is a shot where neither the bird nor myself were moving. Much sharper IMO, but I agree, a faster SS with a lower ISO would be great. Dan

[Dan Brown]

EUREKA!!! Doug, you are correct! I can't wait to use this higher flash sync option! Thank you. Dan Brown

[Doug Brown]

You're welcome!