Robin sings

Taylor,

This is a very nice portrait of this robin. I love that you caught it singing. I would crop some from the right and top for balance.

Nice singing shot. I agree with Bill on the crop. Maybe a little less flash.

Taylor, I'm going to be honest here and say that I'm not thrilled with this shot at all. From a composition perspective, I feel the robin is a bird that partial crops of are not that pleasing. Placing it smack in the middle of the frame is also not desirable for me. The technicals have some issues too . . the background just seems busy and disturbing. The bird is not very crisp. Perhaps both are due to using a 2x convertor at F8. Maybe the background is just too close to the bird.

I hope you'll accept this critique as my own personal viewpoint, but I'd be not doing you a favor by saying nice image without providing insight for improvement.

First jnadler thanks for being so honest,

Thanks for the very honest assessment of my image. My purpose in posting is to get honest assessments of my images. I really do appreciate your comments and prefer to hear what could be improved. That way I can learn what to change.

Non full frame bird: I took several shots of the bird earlier which were more of what you would typically see of a robin (full frame) and was trying an experiment of getting in closer (for one thing, I was surprised that I could get closer)

Background: Good comment on the background, I agree it is somewhat distracting. I would have prefered a neutral background. The bird was wandering around on grass so there wasn't much chance to get a more pleasing background (especially at f8). I tried taking the teleconverter off a little later, but then the bird disappeared. It was actually this past weekend that convinced me that I needed to get a 600mm to allow for higher magnification at a larger aperture so I finally broke down and purchased one.

Bird position in frame: In order to keep the bird in focus, at f8 I am forced to keep the center focus on the bird. He was moving around too fast for me to compose, focus, and reset for a more pleasing photograph. I love suggestions on how other people do it. One thing that I like about the 600mm f4 + 1.4x telextender is that the focus points all work because you are shooting at f5.6.

Crispness of bird: Still having challenges getting a sharp photograph using the longer lenses. I believe it is because of lens shake but am not completely sure at this point. Any thoughts? I am putting my arm on top of the lens and shooting with my face pressed up against the back of the camera. Do you use a wimberly head? If so how tight do you keep the knobs when you are shooting so that there is enough play for panning?

Taylor:

I am not faced with your lens challenges just yet as I'm using the a 100-400 F5.6 on a Kirk BH1 Ballhead. But I will have to soon learn what you are doing now, as I plan on a Wemberly head and 500F4 purchase this year. I'll probably have enough trouble intially getting a sharp image of a stationery object, leave alone a bird. I am happy that you read my critique as you did and not negatively.

Taylor,

Jeff has given you some things to think about and I generally agree with what he has to say with a few points I would like to clarify on my own.

First of all I think any bird can be done justice as a close-up partial bird image. Heck I do head shots of just about anything I can. That being said the composition only gets tougher when doing these types of images as everything has to "work" in the final crop. I say final crop because more than a few images I make are taken with a crop in mind. Focal length is obviously a limitation to composition as you are not using a zoom lens which you can make fine adjustments to. For the focal length you were using I may have tried a vertical and attempted to include the bird and legs, cutting off the bird just behind the legs. Central sensor would have been on the breast.

As far as the sensor you have to be fast to re-compose on a moving bird with only the central sensor, so you don't have much of a choice there. Again, try to think ahead of a crop. Here you could crop the top and left and have a more pleasing composition in the end. Less pixels but more pleasing.

As far as the sharpness it's tough to judge that from a JPEG but shooting with the 2X at 1/200 of a second requires perfect technique AND a generally still subject. More so with a longer lens though, like the 600 (although the 600 is a touch sharper than the DO to begin with, so I hear). The 1.4X is a tad sharper than the 2X so you would have a better chance for crisp results using a longer lens to start with. Also, this same image at F5.6 would have a slightly nicer background.

Speaking of the background: Getting down at ground level with the bird would have thrown the background out of focus a lot more and also would have resulted in a more intimate shot of the bird. Mounting the Wimberley to a 8"x12" board (called a ground pod) works wonders for this, but a tripod all the way down works too (it's just more difficult to move around). Although it makes for a more awkward shooting position, in turn making it even more difficult to get a sharp image.

Guess that's it. Hope this helps.

Thanks Greg, great feedback and ideas

I have thought about getting a ground pod for shooting on the ground as well. What do you use?

Taylor, as presented the bird is neither a head shot, portrait or a full bird, you are basically floating among the crop options that are available to you, maybe a portrait or a head shot would be a good compromise, on the good side the exposure is pretty close to nice, open beak is a plus and it looks as if it has pretty good detail, maybe 1/3 EV less flash!!
Congrats!! But you owe me 1/2 a bird for next time!!