Hello, I am a newer member to the forum, this is my first submission. I am looking forward to learning from others as to technique and methods of nature photography. Thanks.
This is an American Goldfinch taken out my window. I used a Nikon D700 with a 80-200mm Nikon 2.8 edif AFS with a TCII 1.7x extender. The ISO was 800 in order to get 1/250 @ f4.8 with an exposure of -0.5 using a tripod. I shot in aperture priority with an effective focal length of 340mm. I find so much latitude in RAW files I haven't taken the meter off matrix more than once or twice in the past year. Developed in ACR and PS4, not much done beside cropping, a little levels work and some contrast added via curves. Sharpened lightly using smart sharpen and a high pass filter.
Hi John - big warm welcome to BPN - don't hesitate to jump right in and leave comments on other peoples images - no better and faster way to learn - all we ask is that you say what it is that you like or dont like about the image.
Image can be a little larger 800 x600.
Going to reserve my comments until others have had a chance to comment.
big welcome to BPN, John!!! nice first post. please do post at least to 800 wide. it will help to see it bigger. from what i can see the exposure was close. maybe a little under, but with that light you needed to pepper in a little fill flash for the shadows. you certainly found a nice perch with a fantastic backdrop. and i like that you included the two leaves. keep em coming!!
Greetings & Welcome... The color is very attractive and good placement of the elements in the image. The backlighting on the subject doesn't work to my eye and it seems the sharpening + high pass have brought out too much noise in the background (given this is at ISO 800). If you did sharpen the background, I'd recommend using a mask to only sharpen the subject.
The ss seems a bit slow, I'm guessing some detail is lost to subject movement. Should be able to shoot at ISO3200 with the D700 for the ss.
First submission - American Goldfinch
