This Blue Jay was one of 10 or so bird species visiting my feeder at Sackville, New Brunswick, yesterday. As mentioned in a previous post, it was bitterly cold but the jays, chickadees and Hairy/Downy Woodpeckers took it in stride.
I smoothed out the BG by dodging and burning and ran a mild gaussian blur. The bird was standing on top of a feeder and I had to remove the feeder hanger from the image (Patch tool and some cloning). I de-satted the BG to tone down the yellows a little.
Canon EOS 50D, 70-200 f4 IS, 1.4 tcII @ 280mm
capture date: Sunday, December 21, 2008 1:101 PM
exposure program: Aperture Priority
ISO speed: 400
shutter speed: 1/640
aperture: f5.6
exposure bias: -0.3 (enough to control whites)
metering: Pattern
light source: Auto
flash: ON - beamer, -1 2/3
I think the narrow dof put the body in focus more than the head but it is still a nice Blue Jay portrait. I really like the reflection in the eye and considering you were using a TC and at the long end, it is still quite sharp.