Proud and Beauty

[Juan Carlos Vindas]

Hello everybody

I've been away for work reasons. Today I want to share with you this image of a female Green Hermit.

The light was not so good since it was too dark, it was very windy also. The BG is a distant wall, the perch is a natural one, so all I did was to place the feeder close to it but the action was extremely fast, hence I had to be fast too, there were 7 species of hummers trying to feed from my feeder. I am very happy to have an image of this bird since is most common to see it visiting heliconias instead of feeders!

Almost FF, work on PS is limited to a slight crop, noise reduction on BG, saturation and cloning of a distracting twig.

Canon 30D
Canon 35-350@350mm
AV
1/200sec.
f/5.6 (I wish that would be f/6.3)
ISO 800 (I'm following Akos Lumnitzer advise here! as I was afraid to go over ISO 400!)
Exp. comp. +0.3
Tripod
Natural light

[Marc Mol]

Soft light enhances here Juan, with nice clean BG, ISO800 still looks OK with good feather detail. See...... no need to be afraid :D
TFS

[niranjan sant]

superb bird,but i feel little dof was required to bring out details in legs and some part of head.

[Ákos Lumnitzer]

Amigo
Don't be afraid of 800! :) Works as long as you expose correctly. This looks great to me! Lots of detail and nice pose. If you had a tripod you could probably have stopped down one more f/stop. True, but it is very nice as is. Looks sharp too. :)

Don't worry, in five years I will still be using my 30D. And the only other will be in a museum somewhere. :D

[Ofer Levy]

This is very nice. Nice pose, eye contact and what a beak!! I wish for some more DOF for the tail so going 800 iso could have been a good idea

[Kiran Poonacha]

DOF alrady covered, loved the Bird, nice colours and BG too..

[Greg Basco]

Juan Carlos, looks great. The soft light really brought out the colors on this beautiful bird, composition is great, and I think the DOF works fine. La Paz?

Cheers,
Greg

[Jim Fenton]

I like the light and the background and the subject is beautiful.

I think the too shallow DOF with both the tail and the bill in soft focus took away from this one to a large extent.

[Deborah Hanson]

Crop really brings out the lines created in the photo - the curve of the bill to the straight tail.
Also, I like the softness of the tail as it is opposite to the hardness of the bill.
For me, a perch that runs through the middle of a photo can distract, but this one is slightly off center and the lines in the bird keep that from being an issue.
There is sharpness in the feathers. Wish the eye was a bit lighter though.

Beautiful bird.
Deb

[Kaustubh Deshpande]

Juan, I might be the odd man out here...but I like the shallow DOF. It keeps my eyes on the bill, eye and the breast feathers. Beautiful bird. You live in one of the best places on this planet. I definitely would like to visit one day.

[tiziano cei]

great job juan carlos, i love this shot



http://www.lilacwine.it

[john jackson]

I am with Kaustubh on the shallow DoF. The soft-light glow is lush and emphasised dramatically by the soft-focus white tail tips. If all was sharp this would be a very good regular shot of a hummingbird; this image is unlike others I have seen and I am very glad of that. A lovely gentle portrait.