Scruffy owns one of the feeders out back - believe he is an immature male Anna's Hummingbird?
there really wasn't enough light to keep any of these photos - but he was posing so beautifully. I know its best to only take photos when the light is good - but i'm curious if there is anything that could be done to help ones like this. I can really see the difference in sharpness in a photo taken in proper light, and one in marginal light like this. I know that increasing the ISO would have helped - but the noise seems to get so bad on the d300 with the iso over 800.
nikon d300 with Sigma 300-800mm at 800mm, ISO 800, f/5.6, 1/250 sec manual
cropped in lightroom with a little positive exposure brushed on the head
NR and sharpening with Nik filters in PS.
Pat, This is quite a good image, The BG is fabulous, the blurred wings IMHO add to the affect of the image. The eyes are good and quite sharp. The only thing is that it is a little dark. I think it can be improved in PS by a simple Curves adjustment. Just move the right carrot to the left (255 to 213) and it improves greatly. I'd love to have a photo (any photo) of these guys.
thank you Michael! I tried the curves as you suggested, and you are right - it does help. These little guys are great - they have an incredible amount of personality and are so much fun to photograph.
I'm going to try curves on a few other of the shots I got that morning and see what happens. this afternoon we were trying flash with him - (he got very curious about the light flashing at him from the back porch and at one point came over and checked out the camera from about 6") --- and we discovered that he only has 2 toes on one foot. maybe we should call him Stubbs instead of Scruffy...
Scruffy
