I had placed this small branch near my feeders during the recent snowstorms and this guy was kind enough to pose for me for a short time. Overcast day between snow squalls. PP in LR with adjustments to clarity and tint and with just a touch of lightening around the eye area. A pass of noise reduction was done through Topaz denoise. All thoughts and comments are greatly appreciated.
Canon 50D, 100-400mm lens @400, 1/180 sec @ F13, Pattern metering and ISO 400
Love it Dave Bird looks very good, lots of detail and sharp !! About the only thing I'm wondering the extra branch in the perch .. why not break the extra. Can just clone away now :) Big Congrats on this one !!! .. btw a little fill flash would have been great for a catchlight !!!
Hi Dave, Nice capture and agree with Al regarding the extra branch. I would eliminate it. The eye looks a bit odd to me as if the membrane was over it. Finally the grey areas on the left could probably be eliminated which would give the image a HK or cleaner look.
Great color and detail. Good pose, although it might be worth trying to lower the perch next time. Agree with Dave about the grey spot on the left; second twig doesn't bother me a lot. Overcast sky and snow really helped. Well done!
Thanks to everyone for the guidance. I'll take care of the extra branch, or find a new one. Now that you've mentioned it, I do see the haze on the eye which I think came from the lightening of that area. I should be able to take care of that too. All good advice and very much appreciated.
Hi Dave - going to go against the grain here - on my screen looks quite soft.
F13 is overkill here - I suspect it looks a little soft because of the slowish shutter speed - 1/160th @ 400mm - best to try and keep it at 1 over the focal length as a minimum. Opening up to f7.1 will have a dual advantage - more shutter speed and more background blur.
TFS
House Finch
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