Great Tit

[Jonathan Ashton]

Canon 7D Canon 100-400 L IS ISO 1000 1/5000 f5.6
The light suddenly got better other wise I would have chosen a more modest ISO, another shot from the garden hide all C & c welcome.

[arash_hazeghi]

the pose is very dynamic, but I am not sure if it works for me because the image is OOF. This is a tough one they are fast! Did you try to prefocus near the perch or tried to focus in flight?

[Stu Bowie]

Jonathan, I like the inflight posture, and well placed in the frame. I have to agree with Arash that maybe you didnt lock focus, as you had more than enough ss to freeze everything. Pity, but as this is in your garden, you will just have to out and get a better one.

[Daniel Cadieux]

Ditto Arash and Stuart. If you can combine the sharpness of your previous effort with a nice pose like you got here then you'll have a real gem in your hands. Sounds like you are having a blast in your yard though...keep it up and enjoy it!

[Jonathan Ashton]

Hmm, I went back to the RAW and looked at 100%........ yes you are absolutely right it is just a tiny bit out of focus I have deleted it

[Arthur Morris]

Hmm, I went back to the RAW and looked at 100%........ yes you are absolutely right it is just a tiny bit out of focus I have deleted it

Bad move from where I sit. The face looks sharp enough to me.... I sharpened only the bird (except for the white cheek patch) at 112/.3 and ran a 40% Linear Burn on the cheek....

[Arthur Morris]

Amazingly (considering the shutter speed) the body and wings of the birds look unsharp because of subject movement.... Those areas look sort of shimmering. Strange.

[Josh Clark]

Nice action shot, BIF's are always fun. Wish for more focus and detail on the head and body. IMO, the blur on the wings would be appealing more so if the body of the bird were in focus. I like the varied background.

[Jonathan Ashton]

Thanks for the comments everyone and thank you Artie for the rework, guess who's going back to the Recycle bin and having another try using linear burn.

[Jonathan Ashton]

Here is a second attempt: I used a different algorithm, I first cropped to 1024px, made a mask and did linear burn on the white cheek, made another mask of the head (excluding white cheek) and part of forewing, used Unsharp mask 112/03 followed by 50/.1. I made a mask of the whole bird and reduced noise on the background. Any better?

[Arthur Morris]

YAW. The WHITEs are fine but the image looks the worst of all. The face can be much sharper. Remember, my 112/0.3 was on top of your sharpening! So it makes sense that it would not be enough sharpening for the file.... When you sharpen you should not go by numbers: blow the image up and click the preview on and off to see how it looks at different #s.... I am still seeing the shimmering look on the body and wing feathers almost as if we were seeing something printed out of register....

[Cheryl Arena Molennor]

Such a shame this is more oof than desireable. It's a great attemp and capture. It almost works for me but do wish for more in focus.