winter windfall

[tbond]

Taken in the dappled shade of a winter afternoon.
Canon 550d, Tamron 18-270 lens
Camera was placed on a tripod with a wireless remote trigger, focused primarily on the apple but with auto focus on. I sat on a chair about 10 metres away and waited for a bird to choose this apple for a feed.
f 6.3
ISO 1600
exposure 1/2000 sec

http://www.photography.ca/Forums/members/tbond/albums/birds-new-zealand/13331-winter-windfall-v2a.jpg

[Iguanasan]

I admire your patience and I love the light on this one. Can you do me a favour though? Can you re-export the image with slightly different settings to keep it just under 275KB? I see this one is a mere 84KB which leads me to believe the board software compressed it and is making it softer than it actually is. At 10 meters away and f6.3 you should have had plenty of DOF to keep everything sharp.

Too bad that darn leaf is in the way. Moving a foot or so to the right or clearing the leaf away as soon as you saw it before the bird settled in might have made a big difference.

[Marko]

Very striking image! Love the dramatic light.

[NorthStone]

Beautiful tbond. I can see that you've really took on board Inguanasan's suggestion in another post about focussing on the eye. It's a great image. Don't worry about the leaf, we've all done that. All of these little things to bear in mind slowly get absorbed.

How long did you wait for to catch the shot. I'm interested to know as I've not taken any pics of wildlife but it's something that interest me.

Best wishes,
NorthStone

[tbond]

How long did you wait for to catch the shot. I'm interested to know as I've not taken any pics of wildlife but it's something that interest me.
NorthStone

It wasn't very long, about 10 - 15 minutes. Really just the time it needed for the birds to gain confidence and come back. I probably took 5 shots and kept just this one. I liked the light, the pose and the bit apple in the beak. in other shots the head was turned away.

[kevin99989]

Great shot! Love the colors!

Just a question - was it necessary to use a fast shutter speed of 1/2000 of a second, or were you just being cautious? I tend to use a higher shutter speed for these shots, just in case (with higher ISO). Have you used a lower shutter speed on these similar kinds of shots before - if so, what were your results?

[tbond]

I was using the higher shutter speed because I was hoping for bird interaction. however when this single bird alighted, took a bite and posed so nicely I couldn't resist. As it was all set up on a tripod i couldn't rush up and change the settings. at least the high ISO didn't grain it out too heavily.