New to wildlife photography

[mrberg89]

New to wildlife photography and digital slr cameras, as well as this forum. Here are a few shots from the new camera, a Sony a100. Photos were taken with a Minolta 70-210mm lens at various settings. Hope you enjoy, and any pointers would be greatly appreciated. Hopefully I posted these correctly and they show up.

[mrberg89]

Eww. I re sized these in paint and I guess it really degraded the quality.

[Singletracklovr]

Hi mrberg89,
Welcome.
Check to see if Paint has a Quality slider when saving jpegs. Set the Quality to the highest.
Hope that helps..

[Grandpaw]

Welcome to Photography Review! Looks like you are off to a good start with your camera. I will be looking out for more of your pictures, Jeff

[OldClicker]

Welcome to PR and to Sonyland. The whitetail is a great environmental shot and seeing robins this time of year is always a good sign. Wildlife is tough to photograph, especially in the wild where they are still afraid. Work on your hunting skills and get closer. A blind may be a good way to go. - TF

[SARtech]

Welcome! Good start. My only other advice to add at this point is to watch for distracting branches across your subjects... especially from the chest up. When you think you have your shot, look for this and then just move your body slightly up, down, or sideways a little to move that branch somewhere else less distracting in your shot.

[CaraRose]

You probably should look for a better program than paint for any sort of editing. Paint is one of the most god awful bits of software ever created. And honestly it's barely changed since I was 12 years old on our Windows 3.1 machine drawing scribble pictures with it. They made the graphic interface look a little more refreshed and the capabilities haven't changed at all.

There doesn't seem to be a problem finding subjects for you! What Sartech mentioned is important. You really want the face and eyes to be clear. Also branches are the bane of autofocus systems. I have so many shots of branches with a lovely out-of-focus bird behind them!

Welcome to the forums and have fun!

[SARtech]

Ya... what Cara said. And that reminds me... Usually, except for BIF's (birds in flight) captures, I focus MANUALLY on the eyes of the subject. This makes sure you have the best focus possible, especially when shooting subjects in the trees or brush.

[mrberg89]

I have been doing the majority of my focusing manually. I really need to find a decent program for editing my images. I don't think paint is going to cut it