First bird photo

[Garra661]

More or less my first bird picture.

Almost first actual attempt at a picture in general.

and In my defense, it is the worlds smallest bird lol. With a 300mm.
And im not entirely too sure how too crop…. It may have been my distance for the picture but if I get in really close on the zoom. It just loses too much quality. Maybe cropping is different than just zooming in?

a6000 Sony 70-300mm g oss

(105-450mm with apsc)

This one I just zoomed in a bit on the saved pic. That I transferred to my phone.

 

[weepete]

It's a good attempt for your first try, the birds pose is good and it's a nice background. What you've discovered is that you need to be pretty close, especially with small birds to get a good quality shot. This is why really long lenses are popular, 500mm and 600mm focal lengths are commonly used. Even using a really long lens, I found I needed to be even closer than I had anticipated, which is why hides are used by the serious bird photographers.

With cropping it depends on your setup, how much resolution you have and how sharp your lens is. As a general rule I find I can crop to around 1/2 the original size before image quality is noticeably affected, and anything smaller than about 1/4 of the original size is too much. Your sony has a 24mpx sensor, so 1/2 would be 12Mpx, 1/4 would give you 6Mpx.

 

[Sharpshooterr]

Garra, that's a valiant first effort! But why in the world you you seek out the worlds smallest bird? I think next you should find yourself a buzzard or something big like that. Anyway, just kidding, you're well on your way to bird photography.
Camo yourself and you'll be able to get closer, that's way cheaper than a 500mm f4 but that can only help as well!
SS