white herons

Red Spider

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Here's some white herons I saw on Lake Buistineau this weekend,they wouldn't let me get very close,so I had to just zoom in and hope for the best as I don't have a telephoto lens!

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These look like White Egrets, no?
 
No,egrets are much smaller.These are white herons,a much larger bird,cousin to the great blue heron.The smaller birds are young herons.
 
Wikipedia

The Great Egret Ardea alba, also known as the Great White Egret, or Common Egret, is a wading egret, found in most of the tropical and warmer temperate parts of the world, although it is very local in southern Europe and Asia. It is called Kōtuku in New Zealand. It is sometimes confused with the Great White Heron in Florida, which is a white morph of the Great Blue Heron.

The Great Egret is a large bird with all white plumage that can reach 101 cm in height and weigh up to 950 g. It is only slightly smaller than the Great Blue or Grey Herons. Apart from size, the Great Egret can be distinguished from other white egrets by its yellow bill and black legs and feet. It also has a slow flight, with its neck retracted. This is characteristic of herons and bitterns, and distinguishes them from storks, cranes and spoonbills, which extend their necks.

I wasn't sure, so I had to look it up. BTW, I did enter White Heron on the search.
 
Whatever,they're big white birds that hang out with the blue herons on the lake,which says to me that it must then be the blue heron in white morph,but even so,it's still a heron and still white,hence white heron.This is photography,not animal husbandry.It's the photo that's imortant,not what the species of bird is.
 
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Whatever,they're big white birds that hang out with the blue herons on the lake,which says to me that it must then be the blue heron in white morph,but even so,it's still a heron and still white,hence white heron.This is photography,not animal husbandry.It's the photo that's imortant,not what the species of bird is.

LOL. It's good practice to properly identify what you're photographing, because other people will be looking at your photos and comparing them to their own - for identification purposes. If it makes you happy to call it a heron, that's fine.
 
I don't see how that helps anyone take a better picture.Just seems like someone trying to be a knit picking know-it-all to me.
 
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I'm not trying to be nit picky at all. It's just that you titled this White Herons and I was unsure so I looked it up. There is a swamp on my property that is full of White Egrets and I wanted to make sure that I wasn't wrong. So what Wolf said is valid, people do use your descriptions for identification purposes.

To help take a better picture, IMO, the first three have a focus point on the ground in the middle of the image and the birds are far from being in focus.

#4 is your most interesting composition, but the water seems to be washed out. Perhaps some additional PP work will help.

The bird gets lost in #5.

I would suggest a different PoV and possibly a f-stop at the sweet spot of your lens.... somewhere in the f/8 to f/11 range. This should help to get the entire scene is focus. Then another tact is to zero in on one bird and have your aperture wider to help isolate it from the background, f/4 to f/6.1 or so.

Judging by the shadows, it appears that you were shooting near mid-day. Try early morning or late afternoon. Google "golden hours" of photography.

Hope that helps and it's just my 2¢ anyway.
 
Now THAT'S a critique,thank you!The problem with the focus issues here is that these birds wouldn't let me get close enough for the camera I have.I was always 20 to 30 yards away,and even with the zoom all the way out,I still couldn't get a decent focus.I want to get a better one that I can get a telephoto lens for instead of having to rely simply on the zoom function in these situations. I don't know what PoV is or an f stop either,so I'm not sure what all that part means.And yes,I was shooting around mid day.I like shooting on days when it's very overcast as well,which it wasn't that day,that seems to make my pics turn out better too.
 
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This one,I think,turned out the best of any of the bird pics I took that day,and even it has a few issues itself.

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PoV = Point of View. By that, I meant all your shots were taken as if you are standing in the same place on a pier, dock or something and the angle is looking down on the birds. If possible, try to get down on their level, or even crawl on your belly like a reptile and shot up. It will give a completely different perspective. Also, by mixing up th PoV, the series won't be so *pardon me* boring to view.

f-stop is your aperture. I don't know what camera you have, but I'm guessing a Point & Shoot by your description of the zoom. To be honest, I am ignorant on them, but if you can set different shooting modes to Manual, Aperture Priority & Shutter Priority, this will open up your world of photography. You will have to read the manual to find out if you don't know yet.

While your in the manual, check to see how you can lock exposure and focus and then recompose for the final shot. This will help if you focused on the the first egret/heron (from your last post), but then recomposed to include all the birds to make a more intersting composition.

One final thought, a book like Understanding Exposure can be quite helpful in the early days and makes a good reference for when you slip back into old bad habits.

Keep shooting and keep posting, but most of all, have fun doing it.
 
The sneak approach wasn't an option here,they were all out in the middle of the water,the only way I could try to get closer was to walk out on the old bridge or the walkway where the dam gate controls were,both of which gave the downward perspective,I stood down on the bank and took a few,but they all still have the same focus issues.The camera I have is a FujiFilm Finepix S1000fd.I don't know if that's considered a 'point and shoot' or not,but it doesn't have the option of interchangable lenses,if that's what a 'point and shoot' is.It has a lot of different settings that I don't know what does yet,though.But I have figured out a few of them,VERY few!
 
What you have, I think, is considered a bridge camera, where is bridges the gap between a compact digial and a dSLR. After having a quick gander at the specs, it seems you have quite a camera there.

You do have the capability to shoot in the priority modes as well as Manual. Read the manual beginning on page 55 on how to set these and practice. You can also lock exposure and focus and then recompose your shot as explained on page 31.

It's a matter of you educating yourself only because you certainly have a capable tool to take good pictures. Since it has a 10MB sensor, make use of it and set the resolution to it's largest size 3648x2736 on page 78, unless you need to do so otherwise, like for action shots, etc.
 
I've read part of it,I read a little,then go try out what I read,when that gets old,I read a little more and try that out.Eventually,I'll have the whole thing read!Yeah,it's a nice camera,but I'd have waited and saved a bit more money and bought a different one had I realized that you can't change lenses on this one.I'm quite pleased with it other than that though,and would definately recomend this one as a fine camera for most applications.
 

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