This is my first post here, and I'm intimidated after seeing the amazing shots others have posted, but I would appreciate any helpful advice you can give me.
This was a set-up on my back deck.
Nikon D300, 300mm f/4 with 1.4TC
Very overcast day. Shutter speed 1/80, ISO 800, +1/3EV, no flash.
Cropped, Topaz DeNoise, sharpened. Added a little canvas to the left.
Big welcome. Loved the setting, BG, shallow DOF, pose and the composition. Exposure looks fine. There seems to be a slight camera shake. Neat image of not-so-easy bird. Looking forward to seeing more from you.
Very nice first post. Lovely colors, good exposure,nice head angle, snow on perch is nice.
I would encourage you to try and work at a higher shutter speed if at all possible. The light was obviously low, but 1/80s is tough to get consistently sharp images of birds at.
I would much rather trade a bit of noise from increased ISO for higher shutter speed. Easier to fix a noisy sharp image than a low noise blurry image.
Thank you both very much for replying. Yes, my shutter speed was definitely too low, even on a tripod. I forgot to mention that one other thing probably deteriorated the quality considerably and that was because I was shooting THROUGH the window glass. (Talk about a fair weather photographer, right?)
I will increase my ISO and see if that works out better next time.
Its nice to see you photographing one of the little guys to many times they get passed by. Try a more vertical composition adding more of the post, putting the bird higher up in the composition.
Ted
I liked it a lot, though would critique that the bottom breast feathers on the lower right hand side seemed somewhat overexposed and could use some burning in photoshop. The detail might not be there, though. What mode was your in-camera light meter set to?
I had it set to center-weighted average. On my monitor it didn't look overexposed, and the histogram looked fine in Lightroom with no clipping. I always have a tough time with these birds like chickadees and juncos because of the darks and whites on them. I can try some selective touch up with Lightroom or Photoshop again. Thanks for noticing that. It's the little things I sometimes miss.