Chicken!

[PhotoBug83]

Taken inside a barn on a sunny day, with a Canon Rebel T1i and the lens it came with. I was shooting in the "no flash" option, without changing any settings. What do you think? It seems a bit fuzzy to me sometimes, and then I look at it and it looks fine. Ideas? I'm a total noob with this camera and my skin is pretty thick.

 

[stone_family3]

Very nice, that chicken looks so serious.

 

[PhotoBug83]

Thank you! A friend said the same thing about her hee hee. This is one of my father in law's chickens, and I was really surprised she sat so still for me. I shot maybe 30 pictures of her, and she never moved.

 

[LaFoto]

Where's the tip of her beak? (Is "beak" the word?)

Among your 30+ photos of this chicken, do you happen to have one even closer up, with no door frame dividing your photo into two equal halves, one with nothing in it, and one with the hen in it?

 

[PhotoBug83]

She's a kind of old hen, so I think she lost the tip of her beak a while ago. They are free-range chickens, basically, and she goes all over the farm.

I will look and see if I have a shot like that. I think that may be the closest I got though, for fear of making her take off on me.

 

[PhotoBug83]

Here's a few more shots of the same chicken. That's actually not the door way, it's a couple 2x4s that make up the calf pens she is perched on. I should've mentioned that.

I realize this one is dark, I'm not sure what happened.

 

[LaFoto]

In the last the camera measured for the window, therefore threw your photo into underexposure. The chicken's expression is actually nicest in that last one. And Photos 2 and 3 on display here have traits of camera shake, so technically the first is the best. Just not so much compositionally.

 

[PhotoBug83]

Thanks for your input. I agree about the last picture, I like her expression. Is there some way to lighten it up or fix that? I do have Photoshop but haven't had much time to really learn it as my kids are 10 months and 2 years so they don't think Mommy needs to learn that stuff lol.

Camera shake can be taken care of with a tripod, yes? I have one. I need to dig it out.

 

[LaFoto]

Tripod or higher ISO, faster shutter.

And I'm NOT surprised you don't really have the time to delve into Photoshop with children as young as yours! Boy, I wouldn't have had a minute to even THINK about something as complex as that when mine were so young. Let me give it a try ... let's see how much I can bring out. Hang on.

 

[LaFoto]

Here we go.
Of course, noise increases a lot when you try to salvage underexposed parts of a photo. But in order to bring out this cute expression... I at least tried .

 

[PhotoBug83]

Ooo thank you, I like that! I took these in the first 24 hours I had my camera so I hadn't even TOUCHED the ISO or anything. I've been playing with it today and I think I'm understanding a lot more of it now. Thanks for the tips!

 

[Muusers]

Serious chicken is serious.