Summer Tanager

[Joel Eade]

Backyard setup
1DMKIII
300mm 2.8L + 1.4 TCII
580EXII + Better Beamer ETTL -2 2/3 stops
Manual exposure
Evaluative metering
iso 1000
1/125
f/4.5

[jack williamson]

Joel, nice capture of a very shy bird. I would tone down the upper bill just a bit and maybe crop a little

off the left and top. Did you attract him with something or did he land there by chance? I would also

love to see this bird on a completely different perch.

Jack

[Don Lacy]

HI Joel, Beautiful looking Tanager it looks like you nailed the reds which id not easy to do I would also tone done the bright perch.

[Daniel Cadieux]

Beautiful subject, and it pops nicely off the green BG. Sharp, and nice reds. I'm with Jack about the perch - I wish it had more character, and as is there are some very hot areas on it. The comp could be improved too IMO - with the elaongated pose I feel this image would perhaps work as a pano-ish crop with some taken off both at top and bottom (but not too tight!)

[Arthur Morris]

Joel, I am with Dan. You seem to be liking the blocky compositions.... Do you have something against the traditional 3 long by 2 high? Either that or more of a pano crop would work much better here for me :).

[James Shadle]

Joel,
Tough following that crowd for a critique!
How about this? It could be a looser crop, but I like the ratio.
Very crude clone / burn on branch.

[Arthur Morris]

Way to go James. Everything looks much better :)

[Joel Eade]

Joel, I am with Dan. You seem to be liking the blocky compositions.... Do you have something against the traditional 3 long by 2 high? Either that or more of a pano crop would work much better here for me :).

Thanks again for the suggestions, from the original full frame capture I cropped to a horizontal 8X10 keeping the bird out of center. Then for the post I reduced to 800 pixels wide by 640 pixels tall which is close to a 4:3 ratio. Don't know why I like that but it looked good to me. I also like the pano crop as well and agree with darkening the perch.

[Joel Eade]

[QUOTE=jack williamson;665877

Did you attract him with something or did he land there by chance?


Jack[/QUOTE]

He was coming to feed on suet and some orange slices.

[Arthur Morris]

Thanks again for the suggestions, from the original full frame capture I cropped to a horizontal 8X10 keeping the bird out of center. Then for the post I reduced to 800 pixels wide by 640 pixels tall which is close to a 4:3 ratio. Don't know why I like that but it looked good to me. I also like the pano crop as well and agree with darkening the perch.

Thanks for getting back to me. The 8X10 ratio works for me on occasion but never for long, low songbirds against clean BKGRs.

[jack williamson]

Thanks Joel for the response, I'll try orange slices. I have these birds here but can never catch

them for a shot. I would really like to get a male and female on the same perch together.

Jack