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Bird on a Wire, Looking for Critique to improve my skills. Nikon D850 70-200 2.8 with 2.0TC House Sparrow Non-Breeding\Immature
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Niels.hr.Hansen
Well-known member
Nice sharp buttock, most would argue that focus should be on the face and especially the eye.
A little noisy - specially shows in the background. First I wondered ISO400 on D850 should not produce that amount of noise, but if the +5EV means that you have increased exposure with 5 steps i think it's the source as it would mean ISO 6400.
Rather set a higher ISO when exposing it usually produce less noise.
1/2000 sec seems rather fast for at sitting bird.
Your 70-200 mm will produce nice sharp images from f/4.
So I would consider shooting 1/1000 s, f/4, ISO 1600 and have a good balanced exposure with very little or no noise. If you are to publish it in lower resolution than full 45.9 Mpix, down scaling will eliminate the noise.
Wonder how you get 400 mm with a 70-200 mm lens, is there a TC 2.0 involved?
A little noisy - specially shows in the background. First I wondered ISO400 on D850 should not produce that amount of noise, but if the +5EV means that you have increased exposure with 5 steps i think it's the source as it would mean ISO 6400.
Rather set a higher ISO when exposing it usually produce less noise.
1/2000 sec seems rather fast for at sitting bird.
Your 70-200 mm will produce nice sharp images from f/4.
So I would consider shooting 1/1000 s, f/4, ISO 1600 and have a good balanced exposure with very little or no noise. If you are to publish it in lower resolution than full 45.9 Mpix, down scaling will eliminate the noise.
Wonder how you get 400 mm with a 70-200 mm lens, is there a TC 2.0 involved?
Yes, I used a TC2.0 and thank for your critique.
The bird is looking out of the frame. That directs the viewer's eye out of the frame.
Can you recrop so it's looking into the frame? What do you think of the difference?
Can you recrop so it's looking into the frame? What do you think of the difference?
Nice subject, good pose and background but the overall image is soft, especially the eyes. I Agree with the recemondatiions above, you could back off shutter speed to 1/1000 or 1250 for with lower ISO for better IQ and lower the apparent noise.
If you were working in manual ISO mode and bumped up the exposure by 5EV in post then I'd suggest trying Manual Exposure plus Auto ISO mode. If you were in an automated mode and had +5EV dialed in then something isn't right as that subject against that background should be easily within a stop of nominal exposure.
I agree with giving a subject room to look in or at least across the frame with its implied sight line so if this is a crop, maybe a looser square or landscape crop might work better compositionally. In terms of focus, I'd recommend using a single focus point for relatively static subjects like this (yeah I know small birds twitch a lot) and keep that single focus point right on the bird's eye. That takes practice to quickly move focus points where you want them as the bird twitches around but it will help avoid getting the wrong parts of the bird in focus.
Overall though, nice subject, good exposure after the adjustments and great background.
If you were working in manual ISO mode and bumped up the exposure by 5EV in post then I'd suggest trying Manual Exposure plus Auto ISO mode. If you were in an automated mode and had +5EV dialed in then something isn't right as that subject against that background should be easily within a stop of nominal exposure.
I agree with giving a subject room to look in or at least across the frame with its implied sight line so if this is a crop, maybe a looser square or landscape crop might work better compositionally. In terms of focus, I'd recommend using a single focus point for relatively static subjects like this (yeah I know small birds twitch a lot) and keep that single focus point right on the bird's eye. That takes practice to quickly move focus points where you want them as the bird twitches around but it will help avoid getting the wrong parts of the bird in focus.
Overall though, nice subject, good exposure after the adjustments and great background.
Picture not cropped, thank you for the feed back.
Good advise, the picture is not cropped. I can see if I had space to the right.
If your focal point was on the head/eyes and this is the shot you got, then you may need to do an autofocus fine tune to calibrate the lens and lens/TC combo to your D850. You’ll have to do both the bare lens and the lens/TC combination, the camera recognizes these as two distinct lenses.
In addition, 2x teleconverters generally do not produce very good results. Of course, there are exceptions to this, but more often than not, image degradation is quite prevalent. There are members here who get fantastic results with 2x TCs, but they’re usually used with specific lenses, in specific situations. I wouldn’t recommend a 2x TC to use for general wildlife photography/birds.
In addition, 2x teleconverters generally do not produce very good results. Of course, there are exceptions to this, but more often than not, image degradation is quite prevalent. There are members here who get fantastic results with 2x TCs, but they’re usually used with specific lenses, in specific situations. I wouldn’t recommend a 2x TC to use for general wildlife photography/birds.
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As others have already mentioned the focal point was off. Particularly when DOF is this flat the eye should be the focal point. When starting out most of us have a tendency to crop too tightly particularly when we actually get a chance to fill the frame with a critter. But there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. You should have zoomed out a bit on this one until the bird's eye was more or less centered in the frame and not quite clipping the tail. Unless you were going for a portrait look in which case you could have centered the eye and let the tail/body be clipped. No law says the whole animal has to be in the frame 