I watched Cardinals in my back yard all winter. This one snowy day, there were several fighting over the feeder, and I captured these three. Taken with Nikon D40x. I had just made the switch from a point and shoot to a DSLR, so I used the automatic setting on sports, 18-135mm lens.Taken through glass. Note: the head of the Cardinal on the right was edited in.
I like what you are trying here Not a bad idea setting it on auto while you get your bearings. You can set up the camera closer to the birds outside and trigger from the comfort of your home !!!
Might wan to lighten the birds a little Love the one hovering to the left Sure wish you could isolate !!!! Exposure wise you can use Av and set your aperture (wide open probably) With that exposure mode your shutter speed will be set by the camera automatically. Set the ISO to around 400. Then all you need is some compensation, here it would seen you need to add light so about 3/4 to one full stop.
After making the exposure look at your histogram to see what it looks like. You want data all the way to the right but not going over. Will give you a good exposure. Post a lot and ask questions Will be fun
btw for this set up try moving the fake birds form the bg since it will merge with any birds coming to the feeder and detract from the image. Here your best bet is isolating one bird. Might need a little longer focal length and getting closer !!!
A super big welcome Hazel to our BPN family. Very nice composition. A treasure chest of advice given by Mr. Forns. We are here to help each other out; and to make you a better photographer; so don't be shy and post your creations here. Once again, welcome to the BPN family; looking forward to seeing more of your work...:cool:
BTW--perhaps I was misunderstood re the "fake" bird. I did not set up a fake bird. What actually happened was that the bird on the right is real. Its head, however, in the original was behind the feeder, so I 'created' a head for it. All else is real in that bird as well as the whole of the others.
Hi Hazel - welcome to BPN - Great people here and lots of help available.
Al's advice is great - only thing I would add would be to turn on your overexposure BLINKIES if your camera has it - I found this invaluable when I started out. (Usually called - Highlight preview or something along those lines - most probably under the playback menu)
Feeder Rush Hour
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