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Great cardinals everyone. Wish I had some around my house.
Just set up a bird feeder in my backyard. This little guy came round.
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My first mockingbird. Canon 50D + 70-200 f4 L @ f4 200mm 1/1000th ISO 1600.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ozimax
I don't know what it is about this picture, but it seems magnificent to me.
Same here. It's captivating...almost seems like the bird is looking right at us and thinking "welcome to my peaceful world"!Quote:
Originally Posted by HiFiGuy1
Denise
7D,300mm2.8+1.4X TC, f4.0 1/4000, ISO 400 ,handheld
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Quote:
Originally Posted by HiFiGuy1
I'm stunned as well [H] Probably the angle of view. Love it!
By the way, JJphoto, nice actionphoto!
Quote:
Originally Posted by HiFiGuy1
Well, here's the story. I was actually fishing at a place called Redrock, on the NSW north coast, worst fisherman (maybe 7 hours drive north of Sydney). I am the world's worst fisherman, so I brought my camera (30D by memory + 50mm F1.4) and had heaps more fun taking photos. Getting down to water level and taking photos of inquisitive pelicans is a lot of fun. They really are tame, and big.
Thankfully the early evening light was good too.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ozimax
Think about that when you see this [A]:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tc11g8d6IvA&feature=related
Haha nice shot mate! And yes the lighting is beautifull, great job [Y]
Ok, mine were easy picking. I drove through a nearby park and someone had spilled a ton of birdseed. Here are a few and will post more later. Canon 7D, 70-200f4l IS, Kenko 1.4x tc, @ 280mm. Used Nate's suggested sharpening for web post.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Jayson
Is this a cardinal?
Yes that one and the one above it are both Cardinals. I believe the really red one is the male...but others in this thread would know much better than I. I have no idea what the first one is.
The first one is a Dark Eyed Junco. The next is a female Northern Cardinal and the last is a male Northern Cardinal. Here's another male Cardinal I took in my backyard setup last winter.[img]/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Components.UserFiles/00.00.00.32.28/23_5F00_IMG_5F00_7649.jpg[/img]
Joel, very nice image, I like the the pose, the perch and the crop, very nice details too. I would like to see a little brighter though.
Wow, Joel, that's just beautiful. It may be too early to tell, but it seems like Nate finally has some competition in the bird photography area [:O]
Thanks Nate and Brendan,
I agree it looks a little dark on the web, it must have happened when I converted the original tiff and resized/sharpened it for web viewing.
Joel
[img]/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Components.UserFiles/00.00.00.32.28/IMG_5F00_9732.jpg[/img]This a female Cardinal from last summer after a rain storm. Canon 40D, 300mm with 1.4X TC
Joel,
Your photos are absolutely beautiful especially the female cardinal in your last post!! I wish the females were as colorful in my area!
Thanks for sharing!
Denise
Joel.....nice Cardinal captures.
What did you do in PP of the female?
Bill
Here's two of mine from today, I only have a quantaray 70-300mm with horrible clarity but I got two cool ones.
I really like this one because of the bits of snow the bird is kicking up.
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Here are a couple more from my trip to the park. I am not sure what the first bird is however. Taken with 70-200 f4l IS with Kenko 1.4x TC.
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Well, it's not as good as Joel's, but hey, I've only been doing this since December :)
Canon 7D and 300 f/4L IS @ f/6.3, 1/320, ISO 500. Manual Exposure, Handheld.
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C&C welcome.
brendan
Nice photos everyone!
Denise
Hey ddt0725, this is a nice bird, but the picture is **VERY** soft.
Honestly, do you think it should be posted on the "post your best..."?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Oren
Sorry, I deleted it.
Denise
Thanks Bill, here is my general way of working which applies to the female cardinal image as well.
I shoot RAW images and sort through looking for the ones with the best composition, exposure and sharpness. I convert the RAW images using ACR to apply some initial slight adjustments to exposure,clarity and sharpening.Then in photoshop I usually adjust levels and curves first if needed. If there are any small distracting elements in the frame I may clone them out. I generally create a duplicate layer to either reduce noise or add gaussian blur to the background. Very last thing I do is to sharpen the bird using unsharp mask. The sharpening can be tricky and is easy to overdo, the amount and technique is somewhat dependent on what the final output will be. Example: sharpening for small web based images is different from sharpening for print. There are many ways to sharpen an image but I use unsharp mask most of the time. When I'm finished I usually save my master file as a 16 bit tiff and don't sharpen it much at all so I can apply the proper sharpening later depending on what I'm doing with the image.
If you want some in depth info about sharpening this is a good read : http://ronbigelow.com/articles/sharpen1/sharpen1.htm
One particular issue with Cardinals is that the camera seems to natrually oversaturate the red channel sometimes and you can bringback more detail if you selectively desaturate the reds a little, each image is different so apply this trick as needed.
Photoshop can only do so much, I think what is most important (and not all that easy) to learn is proper exposure. I'm still not great at it on a consistent basis.I definitely want to avoid images thatare underexposed....you can't restore adequate detail to these in photoshop most of the time. If you nail the exposure and focus correctly your work in post processing is not too difficult and the image will really pop.
Joel
Brendan,
I think this is a good one....see if you can work with levels to brighten it a bit then desaturate the reds a little and finally sharpen it a bit more....I beleive you can bring out some more detail.
Joel
Joel;
Thanks for the reply; our process for PP is relatively similar. Though the cormorant I posted doesn't indicate this....I just like theaction capture of it's dive.
The reason I asked is she looks to be quite contrasty (is this a word?)and the colors on my monitor (Eizo 21") don't look natural....was she molting? She looks almost like an HDR, whereas your males look quite normal, i.e. colors, clarity, detail.
The cardinals are a staple at my feeding station and one of my favorite subjects....thanks again Joel.
http://i233.photobucket.com/albums/e...nallllcopy.jpg
Bill,
Maybe it's a bit oversaturated or the hue isn't quite right, also the bird was wet due to the rain which made it look different but it wasn't intentional on my part and it wasn't an HDR image. It was spring time last year, I don't know if the bird was molting or not. I was trying to make it look like it did when I snapped the shot.
Thanks,
Joel
NOTE: this is a **100%** crop! sharpness was set to 4 in DPP, no extra PP was done.
http://lh4.ggpht.com/_3nu5cxOgw5k/S4...s/IMG_4299.jpg
He he, finally getting your feet wet aren't you...[Y]
Good shot,
John.
First post to TDP.com forums! Cheers to everyone whose posted thus far. Fast Glass and Nate, your work inspired me to start posting (and go hunting for birds). I hope I don't break to many newb rules.
Here are 3 to get me started...
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50D 70-200L F4 IS Shot @ F7.1 1/1000200mm iso 400
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50D 70-200L F4 IS Shot @F9 1/1000169mm iso 400
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50D 70-200L F4 IS Shot @F6.3 1/1250200mm iso 400
Be kind! :)
-James
Great pictures Yellow Jacket. I really like your backgrouds. Here's one more from my park trip.
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James, your shots are very good. I really like the colors and compostion. A couple of caveats; the tone curve is perfect except the bright highlights, use levels to bring them down a bit, use your lens wide open and blur the background more, they are not bad in this case but in other situations it can be very distracting. Overal great shots.
Jason, your shot isgreat the way it is. Great job.
One from me.
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John.
<span style="font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 11.5pt;"]Thanks very much John and Jason for the compliments. I do agree about shooting wide open, that day I was feeling adventurous [:D].<o:p></o:p>
<span style="font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 11.5pt;"]As homage to Nate, I found a local duck pond with wood ducks and mandarins... absolutely beautiful. I'll post a few wood ducks and then tease my mandarins [;)].<o:p></o:p>
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50D 70-200L F4 IS @ F4 1/640 iso 250
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50D 70-200L F4 IS @ F4 1/250 iso 250
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50D 70-200L F4 IS @ F4 1/640 iso 250
Cheers,
-james
Nice wood duck pic's....I think they would be even more spectacular taken from alower angle but the exposure looks good and the colors are very nice...well done.
Here's another backyard beauty.......40D, 300mm 2.8 + 1.4 x TC....[img]/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Components.UserFiles/00.00.00.32.28/IMG_5F00_4330.jpg[/img]
Great shots James - I particularly like the second one. That 70-200 f/4 IS is a really great lens as long as you can get close enough for wildlife. I agree it would be improved with a lower point of view but they're spot on otherwise.
Joel - that'sa fantastic shot also. Just goes to show how well the 1.4x TC retains the quality of photos.
Good stuff guys, Ben.
Especially if you're fortunate enough to be able to stack that TC onto the back of a 300mm f/2.8! I think I could mock up a TC with playdough and the bottom of a coke bottle and it would look good through that lens.
I'm not a birder by any stretch of the imagination, but I do check on this thread periodically, and I just want to say that so many people's photos have blown me away. There are too many to list, but to all of you, fantastic work! I'm seeing alot more great shots recently that capture my attention and look amazing.
So, big props to all of you! Keep up the amazing work!
Thanks Ben & Joel. Here is one shot at a lower angle.
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50D 70-200L F4 IS @ F4 1/250 iso 250
Best,
-james
Now you're talkin' !! The angle is much better, the only thing with this particular shot is the birds head angle isn't parallel to the camera and his eye looks funky because it's partially closed, the effect of being down on the bird's level is a much better composition IMHO.