Blue Jay

[jfranciskay]

Back yard setup. I know the crop is a bit tight, but wasn't expecting him to land so close. Been trying to get this back view for a while.



Camera Model: Canon EOS 7D
Lens: EF500mm f/4L IS USM +1.4x
Focal Length: 700mm
Aperture: f/5.6
Exposure Time: (1/400)
ISO equiv: 400

[John Chardine]

Quite lovely colour and sharpness! Great detail in the eye. The BG is suberbly rich and complements the bird and the perch.

The bird could use some more room and if the out of camera crop is as-is, you are faced with having to create some canvas, which would be a piece of cake here. The head angle is slightly away from you but in this particular case it does not kill the image for me- a bit towards you would be better but I like it as presented.

[Gary Esman]

Beautiful colors and a great background! A little more DOF might be needed. Someone here on BPN told me right after I got my 500mm to shoot at f/8. Seems to be a good place to start, Otherwise very nice. Gary.

[Joerg Rockenberger]

I think the background colors complement really well the bird. As noted it is too tight. JR

[RAM MALLYA]

Amazing sharpness, colors,BG perch perfec image lovely bird.

[James Salywoda]

Just Beautiful! I'd like to see more room all around but the colors and detail are incredible.

[Ben_Sadd]

Beautiful colours and the detail of the feathers is great. As mentioned before more DOF would have got the tail in focus, which I think would have improved this back view even more. If you needed the shutter speed, you could have definitely gone up to iso 800 to get it up to f/8. Given the proportions, I guess this is not full frame? As mentioned before a few degrees more head turn towards you would have also been good.

[jfranciskay]

Thanks for all the comments. I agree with the DOF and just was not quick enough with the dial :confused:. I was setup for small birds where DOF was OK, then this guy landed very close. Blue Jays are very skittish by me, so I feel lucky to have even gotten this shot. He was only on the perch for about 5 seconds. My SOP is get a shot, any shot, then get a better shot if you can. It is getting pretty close to peak foliage here, so the backgrounds are starting to look nice. This is pretty much full frame, just cropped to 1024x768 proportion. I will have to try to extend the canvas, since it is a bit tight.