I used a bit of playback and this little one flew out of the bushes up onto this perch. She sang a short song for me then took off into some long grass.
I had to add a bit of canvas to this image as it was the second of two shots(burst). My first before altering the AF points. Slight dodging of the lores and surrounds. Would have loved more DOF but 1/320 is a nice speed to shoot these little twitchers at close distance(6.7m). Very slight recovery and a teeny bit of fill light added to shadows(eye) in ACR.
1DMKIV, 600mm IS, 1.4x II
ISO 1600, 1/320, f/7.1, evaluative metering, 0ev
I've tried selecting the bird and painting over the sky. This worked well except for one exception the tips of the tail with the light being defused through it looked terrible. If the tail feathers were in focus I wouldn't have a problem but they are extremely OOF.
I am at work and can't do any processing, but I think there are several options here.
I don't think you have to worry about the background being perfectly uniform. I don't mind some lighter areas, but the luminosity shouldn't overpower the subject.
You could try burn in the highlights with a large soft brush at low opacity. Set the brush for highlights, and 10-15% opacity, soft edges, and try to very gently feather in a correction.
There are some more detailed options, and I will try a couple when I get home ( 8 hours or so unfort.)
Thanks a bunch, I'll give the burning a go.
Please don't go out of your way and muck around with it when you get home. The suggestions are more than enough :D:D
Chris, thanks for the playback disclosure...I find it a very useful tool too.
When using playback, the first thing I do is setup with a proper BG to start with...I know wild subjects don't always choose them, but the odds are better if I put a single perch in front of a pleasing BG and place the speakers directly underneath it. This could have prevented the bright area in the URC. (BTW, I see your avatar seems to have a great all around BG with the same subject, so you have been successful with this before:))
The subject itself looks great, and I wouldn't worry about the DOF. You've got the all-important eye and face sharp, and the rest doesn't matter to me where DOF falls off. Nice pose too, looks to be very curious. Have you considered using fill in the field rather than in post?
Daniel, The bird landed on the same leafless bush an in my avatar but unfortunately I wasn't positioned as well as I could have been.
I have used flash on a handful of occasions with mixed results. This year I will endeavor to become more proficient with the use of flash.
The playback was not really planned, it was a spur of the moment thing and played from my iPhone :cool: