Carolina Wren - new view

[darren]

OK, these are for DougPaul. The bird is on a stump this time instead of the same ol' stick. I know he was getting tired of the stick.

So, to him and everyone else, which do you prefer and why?

The static shot:

or the "action jackson" shot:

I think I like the static shot just because it is a little sharper. I wish I had a little faster shutter speed on the open beak shot. Oh well, I need to get a flash unit.

Both shots are:
Canon 20D
Canon 100-400mm IS L
ISO 800, f10, 1/160, 370mm

The white blurs in the background are snow on the pine trees. I wish they were not near the birds head, but I could not change my position. Are they that much of a distraction?

- darren

 

[kmorgan]

I like them both. The white in the background is a little distracting, you could always clone them out with Photoshop. They look pretty sharp. Do you set the camera up with the mirror lock up option? Scott Kelby recommends it in his book on Digital Photography, Step by step secrets...like the pros.

It requires 2 shutter activations per shot, but you eliminate any vibration from the mirror movement.

As for stick or stump, again, they are both nice. Now if you could get some shots of the bird feeding its chicks in the nest....

Kevin

 

[DougPaul]

OK, these are for DougPaul. The bird is on a stump this time instead of the same ol' stick. I know he was getting tired of the stick.

So, to him and everyone else, which do you prefer and why?

The static shot or the "action jackson" shot:

MOMMY--Darren's picking on those poor innocent birds again!!!!


Guess I prefer the static shot primarily because it focuses on the bird a bit more.

BTW, did you place the lichen on the stump or is it natural? (Figured I'd ask as you admitted to a willingness to perform such manipulations in another thread. Inquiring minds need to know... )

Doug

 

[Mark Schaefer]

I tend to prefer the static because of its sharpness. The action shot looks a bit unsharp throughout, even on the stump. My first thought was a bit of camera shake, perhaps in the rush to catch the open mouth. Then I noticed that the blurred snowy white spots had moved quite a bit indicating there was wind movement in the trees. So is the stump still connected to its roots? If if it was moved to its current location, could it be rocking just a bit in the breeze? Maybe the wren reacted to its world being rocked. The bird's body is mostly sharp, so it could not be rocking much.

I like the quirky expression in the static shot. Kind of reminds me of a Budweiser frog. The white snow is not much of a distraction for me. Everything on the stump looks natural to me, so if it was an arrangement, it is very well done.

 

[darren]

kmorgan - I did not use mirror lock-up. I think it would be tough to do that with such an active subject. I could clone out the white spots, but I don't like to do too much stuff like that in PS. I usually try to stick to cropping, levels, dodging and burning, and sharpening. Everything up to the sharpening is dark room techniques, and sharpening is just a requirement of digital photography. Unfortunately, I don't see any nest shots in my near future...unless a bird wants to build a nest right outside my window.

DougPaul - I didn't add anything to the stump other than some suet. The lichen was there. I will put out food to get the birds to come in, but I do not add things to photos. This photo is all set up in the sense that I put the log on a pole outside my window (well, actually I had my mother put it there). I have the placement of the log lined up with my window and some pine trees far behind the log. That gives me the distance to subject and distance to background that I need to get a good size subject and blurred background. So the shot is all set up, but the log itself is the way it came out of my woodpile.

Setting up bird shots like this is very different from my nature shots. For my nature shots, I will remove dead fallen leaves or other distractions, however I never remove live plants or do anything major like that. I almost never add anything into a shot - I can only think of one shot that I have ever taken where I have added something to take a shot. I picked up this red leaf and moved it a few feet to put it on this moss. I really can't think of any other photos I have taken where I have moved something like that. It is not something I normally would do for nature photography. Shooting photos of birds from my livingroom requires a little setup though.

Mark - I agree about the sharpness. One thing to think about is that I was shoot at 370mm on a 1.6x crop body, which yields about 600mm. 600mm at 1/160 sec is bound to yield some motion blur. It wasn't wind, in fact it was dead calm, so the blur is my fault. Camera shake (blur on stump) and not having a fast enough shutter speed to stop the moving beak. I was shooting from a tripod, but it is a 30 year old piece of crap from my parents basement (my tripods are in Hawaii). The lens has IS, but 1) IS doesn't work at it's best on a tripod and 2) 2 stops of advantage from IS would get me from 1/600 to 1/150. I'm supposed to get 2 to 3 stops out of IS, but with the tripod etc it looks like I am getting about 2 stops worth of improvement.

Thanks for the feedback so far. Looks like the sharper, static pose is winning so far. I look forward to seeing what other people think.

- darren

 

[bikehikeskifish]

I like the so-called static shot better. I don't think the action shot is really 'action'. It's more of a singing shot, I guess. The position of the bird seems nearly identical, so the action is all in the open beak. Now, if s/he was eating something or catching something at that exact moment, it might be an action shot.

Tim

 

[Papa Bear]

Well, I'll be the one vote for the action shot. I think the character of the bird evident in that shot more than outweighs a little loss of sharpness. After all, this is not a still life!