Northern Parula

Great pose and back ground..

A very cute capture of the warbler, Geoff. The exposure is quite good and the background is good. The only nit I have is there is a bit less detail in the face and back than I would expect. Without your shooting data, it's hard to tell if it is a result of the camera settings or a post-processing issue.

The pose and bg are great here Geoff, to my eye the bird looks a bit overflashed.

Nate, if you wouldn't mind can you explain what you mean by over-flashed? This was a situation where the only light on the bird was the flash at 1/16 power with -2/3 fc. He was on the edge of a very thick wood where there was zero ambient light based on the background exposure I needed (which was fully sunlit). To me the exposure on the bird is spot on, but I'm wondering what you are referring to.

Jim, I sympathize. I left the D4 at camp and brought the D7000 to save a little weight on this 20mile bike excursion. I didn't know there would be so little light. The d7000 just couldn't keep up on focus a lot of time. In this instance I had to hit the center body, which I thought would be ok because he was sideways, but he isn't really sideways and it front focused a bit (the back end of the bird is super sharp but the front end is just at the fuzzy end of the DOF).

Delightful little fellow! Great pose and eye, lovely volours, and nice BG.
Sandy

Geoff, to my eye the bird looked a little bit bright and the feathers look as though they have been flashed they have a shiny look to them. You didn't include your techs, so I was guessing as to what your flash settings may have been. If you needed to use that much flash to get the image then great, it's just the flash work was quite obvious to me and ideally I think it would have been more subtle. When shooting fill flash I'm usually at -1.3 FEC or lower. It's a nice, sharp image of this species.

Cool pose and a nice background. Nice shot!

Nice shot of this parula and nice clean bg. I like the pose and detail on the bird.

Excellent pose, bg and composition, Geoff. The bird looks a bit oversharpened to my eye and almost has a flash look. Could you post your shooting parameters?

I really like the pose you have caught and the overall image. I enjoyed the comments from a critique and learn standpoint.

A great bird and pose Geoff. Looks like you did well with the conditions you were forced to work in.

Ken Archer

Hi Dennis, the small image is a bit over sharpened. I usually reduce from the original and apply sharpening, but I accidentally reduced from the already sharpened 1200px image and sharpened again. I wasn't unduly concerned because the 1200px image is right on IMHO. The parameters are f4.5 1/250 ISO 400. flash 1/16 -2/3 All manual as usual. Since the exposure on the bird seems perfect to me, reducing the flash exposure was just not possible for without it the bird was a near complete silhouette.

A nice shot Geoff. I can tell it was flashed, but I like the results. Not a flash user, so I learned something from this critique.

Thanks all.

Hi Ron, I saw your print hanging in Lighthouse yesterday. Well done. I'm glad you had some success there. I only use flash when in the deep woods generally in order to bring out the feather detail lost in the absence of high quality light. I just can't seem to get it to work with the indigo bunting though. I'll post an image just to scare the heck out of everyone. lol. His colors are so iridescent the image just glows and no amount of saturation or other color adjustment seems to work well for me with that bird if flashed. I also don't like flashing owls sometimes as it can mess with their awesome eyes. It's a balance between micro-contrast feather detail that happens with flash (amazing detail enhancement) and some of the counter productive side effects that have to be fixed in post (like steel eye). It can be a mixed blessing for BIF as well because if your flash is faster than your shutter (assuming a certain level of power) and the ambient is high enough to expose the subject you'll get all kinds of ghosts (which can produce nice artistic effects if that was intended or make you want to throw up if unintentional lol). All the best.

Super pose, fine detail, and nice BG - very nice image!
Sandy