Marsh Wren

[P-A. Fortin]

Finally had some time to go out and take images again, it's been ages... It is kind of scary to think that the last time I actually took a picture, I was at Bolsa Chica with Kerry over 5 months ago

Anyway, better late than never. This one was taken during a workshop in a marsh near Montreal. This little guy was quite busy, building nests and screaming around to get some attention. It took some time before he finally got out of the vegetation so that I could get a clear view. Patience paid off. At least I had more than enough time to orient myself to the light properly. You know, the kind of stuff you forget about when one of these hyperactive birds shows up and all you do is press the trigger like mad without thinking and then look at the result and feel the disappointment? Well not this time!

Not my usual gear on this one. I took my girlfriend to this workshop so she was using my gear and I was *forced* to use the gear provided by the photograph leading the group (7D, 400mm f/5.6). The ugly part: the last student who used this gear set the format to "JPG Only" for whatever reason. And I realized it.... about 10 minutes ago when I started to edit this image. Makes me want to cry and scream . Lesson learned.

Canon 7D, 400mm f/5.6, manual exposure, tripod, ISO 200, 1/250, 580 EXII at -1 2/3 ETTL with Better Beamer. Cropped for composition, NR on background, Smart Sharpen 100% 0.3 radius on the bird.

[Quite alot of activity in ETL these days. This is good.]

[Kerry Perkins]

Hi P-A., long time no see. Good to see you shooting and posting again! This is a real nice presentation of the little wren, I like the included environment. The head and bill are a bit hard to distinguish from the background plumage, but I like the head angle and eye contact. Welcome to the 7D/400 club, you remain a member even if you only used the rig once. You did a good job with the fill flash, but I must point out that even the 580 EXII isn't able to out-shine the sun. A bit more light from the flash would have helped but you do have mixed primary light going on and when the whites are in direct sun the shadows end up really dark. Maybe just a -1 FEC would have brought out the left area of the bird. Love the color and detail. Oh yeah, I like the composition - good placement of the wren for my eye. Keep shooting and posting, you are a contributor to the activity on ETL!

[John Chardine]

Hi P.-A., I like composition and the pose is great. Following from Kerry's point, in post-processing, I would selectively lighten the top of left side of the bird as if you were filling with some light. With a jpeg, it's not as forgiving as a raw, but it's still possible to do.