Pretty nice Jeff, picked up some nice feather detail!Good job!
Now my thoughts on the techs, the 400f5.6 is a great lens and one of my favs. It is very sharp wide open (f5.6) and that is a dandy place to use it which will do wonders for your shutter speed in all situations. The reason I say that is even tho' you are using a bean bag which takes care of camera/lens shake, little birds are always 'twitching' and shutter speed will freeze motion. To test this out do a burst of a bird that seems motionless and then look at the images, often you will see slightly different positions the eye misses. I've done this with sqs a lot, with that lens, and it is fasinating running the images fast to see the twitches. Jays are really twitchy.
I like how you picked the focus around the eye area, good. Good pose and sharp. To tweak in PS might want to select the eye and darken the pupil, will appear even sharper !!!
Nonda, when your last name is "Cashdollar" two cents is important. Especially with the devalued dollar (smile).
I will keep er-wide open in the future, good advice. I realize post production s/w can be subjective. I use LR II and do not implement any noise reduction or br repairs. In this shot, the br is distracting, I was focused on image clarity and have yet to put everything together. That being said, should I consider moving to CS4 to start using these/other advanced techniques. Just asking your opinion, I will consider a broad swath of information before proceeding.
I love your work and am passionate about this hobby.
Jeff I believe LRII has tons of new stuff that can, and for some, takes care of all their post needs, I have LRI and CS3. Learning post work is important, but getting it as right in camera as possible is more important, less post work;)
5 cents worth, you gotta raise. My personal opinion only, I think you are going about it just fine, learning the craft and your equipment and sticking those wonderful post tips from the folks here in notes or in your brain..You'll be surprised when they pop back out so to speak. Besides it is great fun to back back and re-do images with new info and see the improvement. I have never seen it here and would never expect to, but I have seen folks that don't even try to learn the basics of exposure etc. yet take every class they can find on Photoshop thinking that they can make any image that they make beautiful no matter how really bad it is. As far as CS3 I think the most useful thing I've ever learned is masking, just love that:D
You have a bang up combo with the 40D and the 400f5.6, you take care of your end and the 400 will take care of its job.
A nice composition and pose, I like the sharp details and color rendition on the subject...my suggestion would be to blur the background a tad more...good show...looking forward to your next one...:cool:
Blue Jay Morning
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