Finch Fight

[Joel Eade]

Backyard setup, I had about 20 of these guys at the feeder simultaneously so there were a few little squabbles, I got lucky and managed to catch one just right

1DMKIII
300mm 2.8L + 1.4 TCII
580 EXII ETTL - 2 2/3 stops + better beamer
Tripod
Manual exposure, evaluative metering
All AF points active
1/1000
f/5.6
iso 1000

[Dave Leroy]

Lovely action shot. Colours are very complimentary and perch looks perfect.

If mine I would add a bit of space on left for the far wingtip.

Dave

[denise ippolito]

Joel, Nice action captured. I like the exposure and the details. Did you do any clean up in the BG?(just wondering) I think Dave makes a good suggestion regarding more space on the left. Nicely captured.

[Randy Stout]

Joel:

Good comments by Dave and Denise. I really like the sense of action. The flash work is pretty subtle, which I like. I might fiddle with the catchlight on the right bird, to bring up the natural catchlight if possible and get rid of the flash one. I always prefer natural catchlights if available.

Cheers

Randy

[Peter Farrell]

Nice capture Joel. I have a lot of finches as well but I don't see much of this behavior.
Good comments from others.
Peter

[Art Kornienko]

The action and exposure are very nice. Great BG too. It looks though like the bird on the left has lost one wing. Also the end of the branch near the top seems like it has ended in an unnatural way?

[arash_hazeghi]

Excellent interaction!

[Joel Eade]

Thanks for all the comments, the background had a couple of dark streaks in it from out of focus tree trunks, I did blur the background and run noise reduction to reduce those dark streaks. The perch is a withered polk stem and I broke it off and stuck one end of it in an old tripod handle to hold it horizontally above the bird feeder. (saw that trick in Alan Murphy's Bog)