by Jim Hansen
Well, back to "bird on stick" pictures. Captured from my deck on a perch I set up near feeders. Getting an amazing number of birds lately, many with their new fledglings. Lots of nuthatches coming by. I enjoyed the feather fluffing on this one, and the intense stare. D800e, 300f4, 1.4tc, 1/250, 5.6, ISO 1250. Comments and criticism very welcome.
Comments
9 commentsExcellent detail, Jim. I'm surprised at the darkness of the bg in your desert environment.
Looks like you have a nice set-up with the perch and clean background. Good detail in the nuthatch.
Very nice detail you have in this Jim. I like the position of the head and pose. I do wish you had a tiny bit more DOF so the entire perch and birds left foot sharp as well, but that is a very small nit. I am not even sure you could have done much about it after looking at your techs. I don't know how much you can push the ISO on that D800E which you probably would have done to stop down since your SS was already down to 1/250. This guys are fast with little twitchy movements, so I would have sacrificed the SS either.
Excellent job in the low light, the nuthatch is exposed well Jim..
Great details, comp, pose, and POV, with the dark BG setting the bird off nicely
Thanks everyone for your comments. Dennis, I live in Paradise, CA, which is mostly ponderosa pine and black oak forest. Depending on the time of day, the background is sometimes very bright. Yes Kurt, would have been nice to have more DOF, but these guys do move fast and I felt I needed at least 1/250 second. On the other hand, I probably could have increased DOF a bit if I used ISO 1600 or even 2000, but that's starting to get into pretty noisy territory. Maybe could have gone to f7.1, but I wonder if that would have been enough to get it all in focus.
Nice detail in this Jim, I like the background and perch. The comp works well too.
Nice coloration on the nuthatch. Very sharp image with background that makes the bird pop. We have red-breasted nuthatches here in Puget Sound region. Their darker colors always seem more brownish to me rather than the blue tones in the white breasted species.
Excellent exposure and detail Jim. Since this is a set up perch I would try to avoid having one that has an obviously cut off branch and go for a more attractive perch.
Thanks again for everyone's comments. Nate, this branch wasn't cut off. It fell off a tree on my property, and I planted it as it was when I found it. On the other hand, it probably does look like it was cut, so I will be aware of that on future set up perches. Thanks for your insight on this.