Pine Grosbeak

[Doug Hitchcox]

These guys are fairly common around school and very tame. Unfortunately they do not like taking perches with clean backgrounds; thought this looked good though. Here is a shot from earlier this month: 1/15/09 2:48:35 PM EST

Camera: Canon EOS 30D
Lens: Canon EF 100-400mm
Aperture: f/9
Shutter Speed: 1/160
Exposure Bias: 0ev
ISO: 320
Focal Length: 400mm
Full frame, handheld

[Axel Hildebrandt]

I think if the berries in the BG are blurred enough they can make a nice background. I like the details and eye contact, fill flash would have helped with the side light.

[Ramon M. Casares]

I would have gone with wide open so the BG get a bit more blurry, the light was harsh but I do like the scene a lot! Congratulations!

[Doug Hitchcox]

Here is a repost with the background a little more blurred... I ran a Gaussian Blur on just the background. It works a lot better when you are blurring really close to the bird if you make a new layer of just the background, apply the blur to that and then you can erase where that layer overlaps the bird.

***Seeing it posted now I need to run some sharpening on the bird, but does the background look blurred enough?