Hi, I took this photo on Sunday evening at the local reservoir, due to a lack of disturbance there were a quite a few Hirundines taking some time out from feeding on the masses of air borne insects. The sky was pretty overcast so light levels were low, but as the bird was hardly moving I lowered my shutter speed and rested the lens on a bean bag.
Canon 20D, 400mm f/5.6 lens
1/250s, f/5.6, ISO 800
Digital Exposure Compensation +0.1
Image cropped to roughly half of Full frame, resized and then sharpened.
I realise afterwards I should have added my 20mm extension tube to help increase the size of the bird, but I'm still not in the habit of thinking of these things before taking my photo!
i Julian - like the low shooting angle - and good HA. For my tastes - you have too much OOF foreground included at the bottom - would crop some out and a little too much negative space.
Like the BG - although there is a dark line about 2/3 the way up on the LHS that is a little distracting. Could also do with some NR on the background.
A tele converter will help you get him large in the frame also - but think you will loose autofocus with thatlens.
Would try using a 1.4X Your AF will be lost but can make sharp images .. lens becomes an 800 f8.0 so need to be careful with all that magnification !!! btw I have not tried my new noise reduction program (Topaz) on my old 20D files but should work just fine and will allow you higher ISO !!
Hi Julian,
I like the capture, the image is a bit on the soft side, you have too much negative space on top and too much out of focus on the bottom that over powers your subject, I suggest on cropping from the top and bottom, and a slice from the left side of the frame to off center your bird a tad more...aslo need to run noise reduction in the background...looking forward to more...:cool:
Reworked the photo with the suggestions given, I have selectively sharpened the bird this time, rather than sharpening the whole image (which probably contributed to the appearance of noise in the background).
Sand Martin at rest
