Not bad Greg. Small birds are a lot harder to shoot that the big ones that we normally go after. Kind of makes you appreciate what Mike Mac does even more, huh? Was this at Big Spring? Regards, Frank
thanks for the input yup, lost the tail. plenty of room at the top. I guess I need to work on composition a bit more. I was really afraid he was gonna take off on me as was a quick snatch. Interesting comment about the sharpening. I don't recall doing much other than the typical sharpening in the raw converter of PS. Once I got it into edit mode I didn't do any more sharpening of any kind. I'll check it tonight. Frank...Yup, big Spring park. I see what you mean about bad background there. Thanks for the comments guys.
Hi Greg. It may be just a jay but you have captured it well. It is so difficult to get up close to little birdies. Nice detail, compositionally you already know about the tail.
Hey as close as you were if you have to crop anything the tail goes very nice shot, these guys are extremely difficult to get. It may be just a tad over sharpened but not to the point that it hurts the image
Re: thanks for the input The ACR sharpener isn't very delicate. I usually sharpen only after doing any other manipulation, like curving or resizing. ACR has a settiing in the preferences where you can have sharpening apply to the preview only, then not be applied to the image after conversion. At this size (1000X1500) I would probably apply USM in two parts: Darken layer: 400:0.2:0, flatten then USM at 200:0.2:0 and fade to 60% with Lighten. Doing this seems to eliminate halos and those sharpened pin-point highlights that get too big.
That's a gorgeous female and really nice shot. Don't worry about the tail...I still haven't been able to catch a decent bird shot without Frank's D70; and none at all of small birds.
Nice job Greg. I tried to get a Jay this afternoon....not exactly easy with the CoolPix. BTW, looks like you had fun w/Frank this weekend at the duck pond...sorry Patrick couldn't make it...maybe next weekend....??
As Mike said, very hard to get a shot at these guys. Now that is what I call a close up, looks cropped, the over sharpening dont think takes away. In any event , great capture. They are very shy birdies , atleast up here.....
