First time shooting a bird

[tookrzy4u192]

My first post here that has anything to do with photography. I was just outside my house and saw a bird on a tree so tried to give it a shot. Here's what I came up with. C&C is welcome.

 

[Aloicious]

nice! welcome to the obsession of bird photography...looks like a great shot for a first attempt, what equipment are you using?

it looks like the bird itself is slightly under exposed, you might want to try raising the shadows and maybe lowering the highlights slightly. it can be rough to get a proper bird exposure with the bright sky right behind.

I'd also crop it so the bird is on the right side of the frame rather than the left if possible, this will give the bird somewhere to look, typically when setting up the crop you want the bird to be looking INTO the center of the frame rather than away from the center.

 

[cptkid]

Anyone else expect to see a hot model when they clicked on this thread?

Sorry, I have nothing to critique you on as I know nothing about wildlife photography

 

[tookrzy4u192]

nice! welcome to the obsession of bird photography...looks like a great shot for a first attempt, what equipment are you using?

it looks like the bird itself is slightly under exposed, you might want to try raising the shadows and maybe lowering the highlights slightly. it can be rough to get a proper bird exposure with the bright sky right behind.

I'd also crop it so the bird is on the right side of the frame rather than the left if possible, this will give the bird somewhere to look, typically when setting up the crop you want the bird to be looking INTO the center of the frame rather than away from the center.

Thanks for the advice! Used a T3i w/ 55-250mm

I'll try editing the picture again and seeing how that looks.

 

[Aloicious]

Thanks for the advice! Used a T3i w/ 55-250mm

I'll try editing the picture again and seeing how that looks.

not too shabby, 250mm is good to start with, most people say wildlife photography starts at 300mm, but its really in how good you are at getting close to your subject, you did really well with this robin at 250mm (I'm guessing you were zoomed out all the way, I don't have access to view EXIF at the computer I'm on right now).

post up the re-edit when you get a chance.

 

[tookrzy4u192]

Exposure: 1/13
Aperture: f/5.6
Focal Length: 250mm
ISO Speed: 100
Exposure Bias: 0 EV

Will do.

 

[Aloicious]

wow, 1/13? was that hand held? if so, good job!....for the future if you can keep your shutter speed up, that is really preferable, especially with birds, moreso with birds in flight. a typical shutter speed to shoot for if handheld is the inverse of your focal length, so at 250mm, you'd want to try and be around 1/250s usually its preferable to raise the ISO to whatever you're comfortable with, its easier to deal with some noise rather than camera shake blur which will be an issue at the telephoto ranges used for wildlife, it'll help raise the number of usable images you can get.

my personal settings for wildlife are to shoot in manual mode, I typically set the aperture to the level I want for DOF or lighting circumstances where I'm at (it usually ends up being wide open most of the time, sometimes stopped down a stop or 2 if the lighting is really good), then I set my shutter speed for my subject (for birds I like at least 1/800 (depending on the lens), better up around 1/1600-1/2000 for birds in flight, if I can get there with the lighting), then I turn on auto-ISO with a range of 100-2500 (which is what I'm comfortable with on my body, different camera bodies will handle raised ISO differently, just use what you're comfortable with) to handle any slight lighting variations between shots so I can concentrate on my subject. there are many other ways to do it, but this has worked well for me.

 

[tookrzy4u192]

wow, 1/13? was that hand held? if so, good job!....for the future if you can keep your shutter speed up, that is really preferable, especially with birds, moreso with birds in flight. a typical shutter speed to shoot for if handheld is the inverse of your focal length, so at 250mm, you'd want to try and be around 1/250s usually its preferable to raise the ISO to whatever you're comfortable with, its easier to deal with some noise rather than camera shake blur which will be an issue at the telephoto ranges used for wildlife, it'll help raise the number of usable images you can get.

my personal settings for wildlife are to shoot in manual mode, I typically set the aperture to the level I want for DOF or lighting circumstances where I'm at (it usually ends up being wide open most of the time, sometimes stopped down a stop or 2 if the lighting is really good), then I set my shutter speed for my subject (for birds I like at least 1/800 (depending on the lens), better up around 1/1600-1/2000 for birds in flight, if I can get there with the lighting), then I turn on auto-ISO with a range of 100-2500 (which is what I'm comfortable with on my body, different camera bodies will handle raised ISO differently, just use what you're comfortable with) to handle any slight lighting variations between shots so I can concentrate on my subject. there are many other ways to do it, but this has worked well for me.

Yes it was hand held. I had taken a few shots of the same position so I could be sure to get at least one that's halfway decent and not blurry. I've been trying to use low ISO for most of my shots because of the noise but I will def try to bump it up next time and use a faster shutter speed.

I'm still pretty new to manual mode (really started using it this year) and just a few weekends ago tried shooting in RAW. So I definitely have a lot to learn so I've been reading a lot on this forum and elsewhere.

Thanks for the great suggestions!

 

[Aloicious]

no prob, raw is really helpful to use, that's all I shoot in, jpeg has its place, but its far better to shoot in raw for most things.

you do want to use the lowest ISO you can, but its a tradeoff, with wildlife you're really trying to capture moments in an environment that you have little to no control over, and missing that certain moment because of camera blur is bad news....when I'm shooting cars or anything I have control with, then its the lowest ISO all the time, but with wildlife, I don't want to miss the moment I'm looking for, so to me, noise with a sharp picture is preferable to movement blur without noise.