Hummingbird

[Saul Furstein]

Newbie here. Our backyard hummingbird feeder is in the shadow of the house eaves but I tried for a picture anyway. Not surprisingly, the picture was way underexposed. But, the wing position was interesting so I have attempted to salvage an acceptable image. I lightened the picture 3 full stops, made the water level horizontal, cropped, and did some other edits using RawTherapee and GIMP. Finally, processed using Topaz DeNoise. Details below. All comments/suggestions/critiques welcome.






Tripod-mounted Nikon D5300 w/ Tamron 70-300

ISO: 2,000

Shutter: 1/1,000

Aperture: 4.8

Exp Comp: +0.3 EV

Focal length: 160

[Arthur Morris]

Welcome Saul,

Thanks for your membership support. We can help a lot. First off, it is best to keep the feeders out of the photos. The exposure looks fine, but the bid is not in sharp focus. Start by learning how to move the AF point around in the frame so that you can focus on the bird's eye. And try setting up a nice flower and putting some sugar water on it (while taking down the feeder ...)

with love, artie

[Saul Furstein]

Thanks, Artie. Got it about the feeder for future hummingbird pictures. For this photo, I will, for learning, try to remove the feeder using GIMP.

[Kurt Bowman]

Welcome to BPN Saul! Artie gave some great advice. I might add, when shooting hummers also try to increase your shutter speed to at least 1/2500 and preferably 1/4000 or higher. It will make a big difference in stopping the action.

[Daniel Cadieux]

Hi Saul, hummingbirds are always so exciting to see eh! The good news is that you are setup to attract them to your yard, so you will have plenty of opportunities to experiment, learn, and improve. The feeder is just much too big to remove in post without leaving traces of processing behind. In time you will see how the hummers approach and use the feeder, so you will be able to adjust to have it out of the frame, or even have flowers setup to have an even better final result. Anyhow, glad to see you participating, and you will see that we have a whole bunch of folks willing to help and provide advice

[William Dickson]

Thanks for posting Saul....and you have some good advice above....Looking forward to more.. Keep at it...it will all come together soon....

Will