a few birds...C&C please!

[stanton3]

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Unedited. Any tips or suggestions for editing would be great...feel free to edit if you want.

Taken with a 20d and 70-300 4-5.6 LDO macro on a tripod. I'm sure that I am the main problem, but is my lens/camera setup sufficient to get some higher quality images? The lens is pretty old(it came from my mom's old canon rebel film camera.)

Thanks for any help!

 

[dxqcanada1]

You need to crop out the background.

If you like to take pictures of birds, you will need to upgrade that lens.
500mm would be good ... or up to 400mm.
The lens that you have (I suspect Sigma) is not high enough IQ to do any major image cropping.

 

[stanton3]

Will do. The lens is a Canon, it's just very old. Thanks for the help!

 

[dxqcanada1]

Hmm, I would have thought a Canon 70-300mm EF would be better IQ ... possibly focus is off.
You should do a focus test.

The Tamron 200-500mm is pretty good for it's price ... though not the fastest lens ... it is affordable (just short of $1000.00).

Keep shutter speed high.
Get closer (whenever possible) ... or longer focal length

 

[SCraig]

The subject is far too small to be a useful shot but the images are very soft (not sharply focused), so cropping isn't going to make them any better. There is no EXIF data on the images so I can't tell what the aperture and shutter speed were, but some of it appears to have been a too slow shutter speed. There is some motion blur in the Woodpecker's head in the third shot.

A 300mm lens, even a good one, is pretty short for shooting small birds at any distance. You'll have to do a lot of cropping to get a decent image. I shoot birds with a 500mm lens on a crop-sensor camera and small birds are still very hard to get close enough to much of the time.

 

[stanton3]

Excuse me, you are right! The lens is a quantaray...no idea why I thought it was a canon. My fault.

I used the AF to get it as focused as possible then made tiny adjustments when he moved.

Thank y'all for the help!

 

[coastalconn]

The Tamron 200-500mm is pretty good for it's price ... though not the fastest lens ... it is affordable (just short of $1000.00).

Keep shutter speed high.
Get closer (whenever possible) ... or longer focal length

Or $400-500 used I love mine and I think I have shown it off a few times here

 

[stanton3]

Yea I've definitely been checking for some used ones! Will the 20d limit the 500mm iq at all?

 

[coastalconn]

I kind of have a theory that some Tamron lenses and Canon Bodies don't play nicely.. Just a theory... This is the flickr group for the lens, Besides me and my Nikon, I've been seeing some nice results with Sony bodies lately, not sure if there are any Canon shooters in there anymore.. Flickr: The Tamron SP AF200-500mm F/5-6.3 Di LD (IF) Pool