House Wren

[Randy Given]

Just getting started, wanting to learn. Critiques appreciated!

Canon 7D
Canon 300mm with 1.4x II
f/5.6
1/500
ISO 400
Lightroom 3 : auto, cropped

[Kerry Perkins]

Hi Randy, big welcome to BPN and our little corner here in Eager To Learn! We are all here to learn from each other and I look forward to seeing your work and hearing your thoughts. Thank you so much for your support of the site through your membership.

I love the cable tie perch, the wren is about as much as this would support! You didn't mention your exposure method in your post, but the image seems to be exposed for the background and not the bird. You have very bright light coming from the left of the image, and the angle of that light left the entire bird in shadow with a very bright background. Composition-wise, I would crop from the right and the bottom to move the bird out of the center of the frame. Keep them coming, we never run out of opinions...

[Rachel Hollander]

Hi Randy - welcome to BPN. You'll learn a tremendous amount here. Good advice by Kerry above. Looking forward to seeing more of your images.

TFS,
Rachel

[Jeff Cashdollar]

Randy, welcome and feel free to use the resources on this educational site. For example, there is an Educational and Tutorial Forum full of threads for all ranges of experiences. You might want to give this a read:
http://www.birdphotographers.net/for...e-photographer.

You have the right equipment just need to develop field techniques. The thread above references some good reading material too.

In this image, the eye and lens side of the subject are in a shadow. Try and get the sun over your shoulder to project light on the subject. The bird is a bit soft, not sharp detail in the feathers. This could be motion blur, are you in Al Servo mode. This can help to some extent. What were the tech specs (e.g., AV, Al Servo, AF and Eval Metering).

Hang in there my friend you are on the right track.

[Randy Given]

It was set to evaluative metering, which clearly took a lot of the bright background into account. I'll switch to partial metering and use AE Lock as needed (might end up switching to spot metering with AE Lock, we'll see).

The focus was AF Point Expansion. I tried the 19-point, which works great for BIF, but with many birds in trees it wasn't working for me. Spot focus was too fine for me.

The sun positioning would be good. This was a spur of the moment shot, so not much preparation. That set of birds does seem to hang out there so I could take more time and planning for better lighting next time.

I've wondered about the focus in a couple of shots, might have to do some tests. But, I think it might be the f/5.6. I tried f/6.3 on some today, but I'll probably end up going to set-f/8-and-forget-it.

I recomposed for a better rule-of-thirds and it's improved -- kinda like writing: edit, edit, edit. Or so I'm told.

Thanks for the feedback -- keep it going!

[Jeff Cashdollar]

I use center point focus the majority of the time. Did you use AV, TV or Manual. I would stay with evaluative for now. Get too many things moving at once and it will drive you crazy. I see many Canon setups like this (Center point focus, AV, Eval, Al Servo, AF and ISO =400). Then adjust the exposure comp with AV as needed. Thanks for the information, let's see some more real soon.

[wendell westfall]

Randy, for me the bird just needs to be sharper . . . otherwise I like it . . .

[Randy Given]

Sorry, forgot to mention AV (aperture-priority) that I have set to custom C3 position for stationary birds. Someday I'll probably get to BIF that I'll assign to C2.