Had a visit from some birds

[Letrow]

My wife had put some birdfood out in the garden and we had a few birds visiting, eager to taste it.




A blackbird






A very relaxed and trusting robin, who allowed me 30 centimeters of distance


And a couple of jackdaws, who were shy and didn't eat till I had gone inside

I was pleased with the bokeh on this lens (18-200mm shot at F5.6).

[DippyRebel]

Lovely clear robins.

The exposure of the second blackbird is good, with nice feather detail (not so sure about the background - but not a lot you can do when it's perched right in front of the wire fence!).

[Katy Noelle]

Wow! These are gorgeous and clear!

[Letrow]

Lovely clear robins.

The exposure of the second blackbird is good, with nice feather detail (not so sure about the background - but not a lot you can do when it's perched right in front of the wire fence!).

I agree with you on the background, but you take what you can with this one.
This one looks more natural:

[jiro]

Peter, the sharpness on your bird images are really impressive. All are very nice. Good job! As for the background, if you are handy with extracting an object on a frame, you can extract the black bird and blur the background a little bit to salvage the image. Something like this:

[MiniChris]

I love these little fellers. May I ask what lens were you using for these images and what focal length/f:stop. I am trying to decide between the 12-24 and a good zoom.

[jeeperman]

Nice birds Peter. I really like the Blackbirds.

[ScoutR]

Wow! very good. All three of the Robins are excellent. I like the second blackbird, the context is good and the background does not really bother me at all. Like you say it is quite natural looking and the bird stand out on his own. Jiro's rework is also quite nice though.

Good work, birds are difficult - said the one who has spent countless hours waiting for blue jays and cardinals to get within range.

Wendy

[Suzanne]

Wow beautiful birds. I love seeing these bird shots from all over the world. They are so exotic to me. It's like a virtual bird feeder.

[GeorgeM]

The robins are especially sharp. Nice series!

[Letrow]

Peter, the sharpness on your bird images are really impressive. All are very nice. Good job! As for the background, if you are handy with extracting an object on a frame, you can extract the black bird and blur the background a little bit to salvage the image. Something like this:

I like that Jiro. I'll have to check with my son, who is more adept at Photoshop and Gimp to show me how. So far I stuck to the simple things mainly, but this opens up new possibilities.

[Letrow]

I love these little fellers. May I ask what lens were you using for these images and what focal length/f:stop. I am trying to decide between the 12-24 and a good zoom.

Chris, I did these with the Nikkor 18-200mm at F5.6. The lens was zoomed to 200mm (at this close distance you might get some breathing though, so the real zoom length might have been less).

I quite like this zoom, because the minimum focus distance is quite small compared to the 70-200mm for instance. For the robin this was ideal, as you could get really close to him at some points (30cm approximately).

The 12-24mm is something else entirely, but if you get really close to something in the foreground (10 cm is nice for effects) it gives you something special in your photos. I couldn't have done these photos with that lens though.

I like both lenses but the 18-200mm is the most practical. Take that one along and you don't really need anything else if you want to travel light.

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Peter,

Great series, love the Robins - I can remember them being that bold when I was young, but we don't have them in our garden now - but having four cats might be relevant that and I rarely dig the garden, so there's no benefit for them

Jiro's defocus of the background is very good, you can't always get away with doing it because there's often something in the shot that gives it away, but in this case, it has worked very well, looks natural, just 'further back'

Cheers,