Scissor tailed flycatcher

[Sidharth Kodikal]

Not terribly happy with it, but here's my first.
Not sure about the crop. The long tail made it a bit difficult for me.

It was pretty overcast; may be I should have pushed the ISO.

1/30th, f8.0, EC +1/3, ISO 200
Canon 50D, 300 f2.8, Kenko 1.4x
Handheld

After resizing to stay under the max height of 800 pixels, it looked a lot softer than the raw. I applied slight unsharp mask to it.

[Lance Peters]

Hi - a big warm welcome to the BPN family - nice first post - gorgeous bird.
Can see that long tail would be a little difficult to deal with - always best not to cut any body parts off - the tail is just clipped on the RHS would go back and include all of the tail if you have it.
Good ha and eye contact - colour rendition looks good and sharp to boot - well done at that shutter speed - general rule of thumb is that you want to be at 1 over the focal length - so here 1/400 th as a minimum to ensure sharpness.
BG looks good - might just try and tone done the circular highlight behind the birds head.

Looking forward to seeing more :)

[Gus Cobos]

A big warm welcome to our BPN family...I like your first post...Mr. Peters covered all of the techs. and very good advise given. looking forward to your next one...good show...:cool:

[Sidharth Kodikal]

Thanks for the feedback.

Lance, yes, I would have liked to increase the SS; unfortunately the sun has refused to cooperate ever since I got my new lens :) I hesistate to push the ISO as my 50D seems horribly noisy (a bit disappointed with that aspect) but I should have gone to 400 at least

I didn't have my flash with me that day. (although flash photography too is a new ball game for me).

So, when I went out today - again, very cloudy and wet - the flash came in handy.
My MO currently is set it in manual with SS of atleast about 1/200th when hand holding and aperture per required DOF. Let the flash in ETTL provide the fill light. This gave me over-exposed shots until I dialed in about a -1 2/3 flash compensation.

Are there any tips and tricks when using a flash for bird photography?

[Jeff Cashdollar]

Agree with Lance's comments. Nice image shutter too slow and too tight.

You are right, push ISO, open aperture use flash or sometimes we just stay home.

I love the simple composition and what a beautiful bird, nice first post - much better than mine.
You have a good camera and lens, keep them coming.