Lesser doublecollared sunbird feeding on hibiscus.

[Jaemie]

I tried again today and got a couple chances. I parked the 'hide' more on the side of the flower and did some pruning to have the background leaves as far away as possible. With the help of all your tips I think they turned out pretty well. I got a good (composition) shot of the female, but I had no luck with the male as you can see. What do y'all think of these??

1. Male


2. Female

I like these very much. #1 could be sharper and #2 needs a bit more DOF, as Infinite_Day pointed out, but otherwise I think these are fine. The flowers, usually dangerous distractions, are merely subtle props, here. Very good work, imho.

 

[BlackSheep]

Hi Blacksheep,

Thanks for the comment.
I use a SP Tamron VC 70-300 for the wildlife pics.
Most of my pics are shot at the long end. Both last pics were shot at 1/80sec.
Thanks in advance.

I suggest you try using a higher shutter speed. A general rule of thumb is to use a shutter speed at or above the lens length - i.e. if you are using a 300 mm lens, the shutter speed should be 1/300 or faster. Here's a link to a website that explains it well: Lee Webb Nature Photography

 

[rick93]

Thanks for the comments everyone!

I suggest you try using a higher shutter speed. A general rule of thumb is to use a shutter speed at or above the lens length - i.e. if you are using a 300 mm lens, the shutter speed should be 1/300 or faster. Here's a link to a website that explains it well: Lee Webb Nature Photography

I checked out the website Blacksheep, really nice. Thanks.

 

[dennisT]

This is the exif for this picture of a Lesser (Southern) Double Collared Sunbird, re-sized for the post:
File: Lssr dbl cllrd snbrd Bshmns _DSC6679.jpg
File size: 4,097KB
Camera Model: DSLR-A700
Firmware: Adobe Photoshop CS4 Windows
Date/Time: 2008:08:23 10:06:07
Shutter speed: 1/500 sec
Aperture: 8
Exposure mode: Av
Flash: Off
Metering mode: Multi-segment
ISO: 500
Focal length: 500mm
Focal length: 750mm (in 35mm film)
Image size: 2560 x 2214
Rotation: none
White balance: Auto
Color space: sRGB
Saturation: Normal
Sharpness: Normal
Contrast: Normal
Color profile: sRGB IEC61966-2.1
User comments:
"SONY DSC"

It is a relatively old picture taken with an APS-C sensor camera using a sigma 50-500 lens hand held. Point is that at 1/500 s you can get pretty good definition (and this is about 40% cropped). Remember that beyond say 1/500s you might as well switch your Vibration control off if you have it - I set my AV and if speed is insufficient I crank up the ISO - if the picture is too noisy then the shot probably was not on anyway.

 

[ChristianGrattan]

@ DennisT;
I cropped it a little, Aperture was f/9.0 at 1/80s ISO 800. I guess I should have used a smaller aperture and lower ISO??
I was looking for more depth to get more of the bird in focus. Was I wrong in this situation?
Thanks

I might have tried to go a little faster with the shutter speed and taken the aperture down. The stamen on the flower is a little blurry to me. A faster shutter might have solved this. I think that using a shallow depth of field might have been nice. You can always to a test to see if you want to go shallower in the future. Just select the bird and the flower and put a blur on the background and see how you feel about the result. If you like it better then you know what to do the next time.