a fairly hefty crop to remove a large expanse of featureless snow..

http://www.cavecom.com/pics/bird-1.jpg

trog

Trog - Sort of a funny shot. Too bad it's not a little better lit and was a bit sharper, but I guess that's what happens with large blowups of image areas.

GB

the front of him is sharp enough.. the crop isnt that big to be honest more to remove my piece of "bait" than anything else.. he he

a 300mm lens produces the shallow dof.. pretty well impossible to get more of him in focus.. i took about thirty shots durning a ten minute stop for refeshments..

some tree based some on the ground.. most of the ground ones had camera shake or motion blur and failed.. the tree ones worked better the birds remained still for longer..

full frame of the first shot..

http://www.cavecom.com/pics/fullbird.jpg

full frame tree shot..

http://www.cavecom.com/pics/bird1.jpg

they could both be tweaked for printing.. and both as usual suffer from being downsized and presented against the white forum backgound for critique presentation.. i should perhaps tweak for the actual image u see here not simply the full size one as i see it.. a different set of tweaks would be required..

thanks for your comments..

trog

ps.. as u can see from my piece of bread they are pretty small birds.. the pic might be better with the "bait" dunno.. he he

Well trog, i agree, the other post is a Chernobyl bird...(hahaha still laughing about that one...very funny)

As for the first shot, there is a smudge of color at the bottom right that is distracting, and yeah it could use a little tweaking....

the second, although maybe...just maybe could use a little touch ups, i really like....great DoF and the composition is nice enough in my opinion...

you might be more successful baiting them with worms... but hey, don't take my word for it, i have never done this before so i am just guessing...:D

Marc

Baiting em sounds like the best way....... Unless you have a lot of time to wait them out. But you might get frostbite first (the birds win).

300 mm shouldnt be that shallow, should it? Did you shoot it at a smaller aperature? Whatever.. a shallow DOF be an advantage too, makes the subject stand out better. I have a 500mm lens and it's min aperature is f 8.0, which makes it very difficult to use since the shutter has to be so slow - I pretty much find the lens unusable for that reason. It also doesnt blur the background as well as I want. :(

poor fluke really we just happened to park the car under a tree full of finches.. i have never seen so many in one tree or so close..

i opened the car door threw out some bait.. part of my lunch..i dont eat worms.. he he.. put the camera on auto and tried to get some shots.. there wasnt time for manual focus and i pretty much relied on the camera getting the focus correct.. the birds came and went very quicky.. most of the ground shots failed then i saw the tree with some in and had go at that..

the lens was at F6.7 ISO 400 shutter at 1/350 of a second for the ground shots.. i could (in retrospect) have boosted the iso to 800 and used a smaller aperture.. but its easy to be wise after the event.. he he

have a look at this "no-bird" shot.. exactly the same frame as the first bird taken about one second afterwards,, he he.. there is a bird then there isnt a bird..

http://www.cavecom.com/pics/nobird.jpg

i have not posted my best ones by the way.. i have a couple i consider "better" from the little sequence.. i have far more blurred "disasters" thow.. he he

thanks for the comments

trog