American Redstart (nest with babies)

[Mike Lentz]

On one of my routes through the woods I photograph, I came across a nest that was out in the open and about seven feet off the ground. I spent a few minutes with these guys and moved on.



Nikon D300 ~ Nikkor 300mm F/2.8 with 1.4x TC on tripod
ISO 800 ~ F/5.6 ~ 1/320 sec ~ fill flash at -1 2/3

[David Fletcher]

Super shot Mike. Like the comp and arrangement. Bg pretty cool too.

[Chris Kotze]

Sweet moment captured. Greta detail and colours

[Stephen Stephen]

Nike nice image of this mother and her chicks. I might have used something like f7.1 to try and bring the chicks in focus as well.

[Stu Bowie]

Great sighting Mike, and love the open hungry beaks. A slightly higher stance from you would have been first prize to peer into the nest.

[Mike Lentz]

Nike nice image of this mother and her chicks. I might have used something like f7.1 to try and bring the chicks in focus as well.

Thanks. My question is what would that have done to the shutter speed in an already low light situation? ;)
I could of course have went to manual mode - F/8 or whatever and used flash as my main light source, but I wanted to include as much ambient light as possible vs getting an over flashed look... thats just MY taste. :)

Stuart, yeah I hear you on getting about a foot higher, unfortunately my Gitzo 1325 only goes so high. :o

[Doug Brown]

Nice find Mike! I think it's unlikely that you could have stopped down enough to get the babies in focus given the amount of available light. You could have tried doing a bit of in-camera underexpsoure, boosting your fill flash a bit to compensate, and stopping down a little. It's a balancing act but something worth thinking about next time.

[Harshad Barve]

This is such a lovely image
All beek open postion of kids adding so much with great BG
thanks for sharing
Harshad