Hi, Photographed in Madera Canyon, AZ , at 5500' level. 1/17/2008 10:04 AM using Olympus E-510 IS, Zuiko 70-300 1:4-5.6 ED (140-600 equiv) Hand Held at full Focal Length 300mm, AP 1/200 F8, Auto WB, EV 0.00. Cropped, Resized ,Sharpen Edges, Hand held sitting down. Beautiful sunny morning. Gus
Last edited by Gus Hallgren; 01-20-2008 at 08:27 AM.
Reason: Add comments
Gus, this is a beauty...both the bird and the photograph. I think this would be even better backing off just a bit and allowing the bird to have more room in the frame. So often we are intent on getting in as close as possible that we can crop a bird too tight. Hand-holding a big lens like this at 1/200 is quite a feat. This looks fairly good as far as sharpness, but I think that either a tripod (preferable!) or opening up your aperture a bit more perhaps f/6.3 would have given you the shutter speed you needed to pull off an even crisper image. I'm just offering a few suggestions, but keep in mind that you should be REALLY proud of this image! Well done!
Adding to Judd's comments, there seems to be some motion blur. Another option would have been a higher ISO. I can't find information on that in your original post.
What a sweet bird, nice colors and good technique especially for hand holding it. Agree with the previous posters a tripod and a higher shutter speed would help here. Also I think a bit more room around the bird would help the overall composition.
You sure are on the right track, keep them coming.
Great photo, Gus. I'll echo Judd's observations and add just one thing - if I had processed this photo I would hit it once with sharpening, selected the bird, reversed the selection and use noise reduction on everything but the bird. My telephoto is a monster and I don't get crisp photos without my tripod - but then I'm an old geezer. Good work.
Gus -
Nice bird which i wish we had up here
Just a quick comment on David's suggestion - - IMHO sharpening a noisy BG is self-defeating
Using layers it's better to select/mask the bird - use noise reduction on the BG, invert the selection and just sharpen the bird as needed.
Just a thought
Keep them coming
Hi folks, Thank you, I appreciate all your suggestions, and will try to get a better photo that requires only slight post editing the next time. What perked it up slightly for me was making 5 adjustment layers>Curves & tweaking the indiviual colors. Should make more effort to use my tripod . . .till next time. Gus
Acorn Woodpecker in the Wild
Posting Permissions
