Hawfinch, Grubodziób zwyczajny (Coccothraustes coccothraustes) Shot in a city park in northern Poland using Sony A77, Sony 500mmf4 @ f/6.3 1/60s ISO400
(no crop)
Interesting pose and nice looking bird. If you were that close, it's tough to get enough DOF. Smaller aperture would have helped some, as would getting the focus near the bird's eye.
That was close! The bird is tight in the frame IMO, but the bigger issue is the soft eye - looks like critical focus is on he feathers below the bill - more dof, or moving the focus point up and right, if you had time (or focus on the eye and recompose), may have helped. Don't be afraid to raise the ISO for more shutter speed. Good exposure, and nice separation of subject from the background.
The composition is very tight and as mentioned, the shallow DOF is avoidable by stopping down. I would think your Sony would be OK at higher ISO, even 1600, which would give you more shutter speed and a smaller aperture to increase depth of field. I would certainly pick depth of field over shutter speed in this instance. With experience it is possible to even hand hold and get sharp images at 1/60th with a 500mm lens. Agree about eye being soft, it is imperative to have a sharp eye on the subject, even if other elements are softer.
Hawfinch
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