First off I want to hand it to you guys, what you do is HARD. I love photographing something for fun, and this is fun and challenging, I brought one of my Tripods from the studio and my 1.4 ex home to use.
1D Mark III, 300 2.8, 1.4 ex II, ISO 500, 1/160 f5.6 Bogen 3021 Tripod AV mode +2 comp (snow)
Hi Denny,
I like the capture, the colors are good but the bird is a little soft especially around the eye area, and you have a twig coming out of the bird's back. The whites are a little on the hot side and the overall image is under exposed. I made a few changes to illustrate my point. I increased saturation and contrast, selective sharpened the bird toned down the whites and cloned out most of the branches in the background that were taking the attention away from your main subject...see if this presents better to you...:cool:
Got some suggestions ... on the tech side might want to increase the ISO since your camera performs so well and also with snow in the bg there will be very little noise any way, most of the noise will be in shadows. Also there is something funny about the feather detail, did you have to crop much?
Exposure wise I would only open one an one half if you spot meter on the snow, with two you will start to loose texture. Don't really see the point of focus and the entire image looks a little soft. With your effective magnification of over 500mm with camera crop factor and converter the 160 ss is on the low side, really have to hold steady. Prefer going at it wide open at f 4.0 and pick up the extra speed, lens is plenty sharp wide open. Raising the iso to 80 will get you close.
The other key is getting the bird with a pleasing bg, cluttered does not work and removing like Gus did (good job) never looks natural. Not easy but can be done !!! Would suggest bird feeders setting up a perch with good bg !!!
Thanks everyone, I agree with the bird looking soft. I am cropping quite a bit.
I am unsure about the halo look, I too saw it went back to the raw image and its there too, so not the sharpening like I thought it was.
Denny, keep plugging-if you set up feeders w/ good Bg like Alfred said-you will get the shot.I learned that when shooting w/ a long lens you need to use a good long lens technique- whole peanuts will attract bluejays early and in early eve. Good luck and don't give up they will get better!
Todays Try
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