golden cistacola

[avkomp]

caught this guy singing up a storm this arvo.

I went out to try to get some shots of a finch I need to id.
Pickings were slim when I heard this guy. I repositioned myself to get a shot and he flew off, but whilst looking for other finches I noticed him go to the same bush 3 times, so I repositioned myself in the grass with the sun right etc. after 30 mins or so he came back and gave me this.
I wanted him slightly higher on the bush so he would be on full display, but alas this was not to be.

I have a couple of others at a lower iso.
80-400 vr @ 400mm sb800 @ -1 ev and bb. hand held
about 85% of full frame horizontal format cropped to vertical

Steve
Steve

[blacknstormy]

Steve - that is a truely amazing photo!!!!! Puts a whole new meaning to the phrase - 'in full throat' !!!! You could always clone out the offending piece of bush - but in a way, it adds context to the shot.

Well done - and well worth the wait !!!!!!

Rel

[Killakoala]

Very nice indeed. The blue background really adds some good contrast to the bird to make it stand out more.

[avkomp]

I was just looking at the other shots,

I have one more chest on where you can see the yellow of his breeding plumage but the bush is slightly more annoying.
might just have to post it anyway. he was cute.

Steve

[mudder]

Just shows that your understanding of you environment and patience will get you, great shot!

Brilliant timing, detailed and nicely exposed, great framing and stands out against the background well... Good catch mate, I'd be very happy with that...

[avkomp]

just posted the other shot

http://www.dslrusers.net/viewtopic.php?t=14078

more chest on but still with the goddam sticks in the way.

Steve

[kipper]

While the pose is fantastic, I'll have to say the foliage in front of the bird is a tad distracting. While you say they're 85% crops they don't seem to be that sharp for a 12mp image. Slow shutter speeds?

[Finch]

Steve,

A very nice pic indeed and great to see him in full voice. Very sharp and great blue background. Normally branches would be distracting but in this case it adds to the photo.

I regards to coming back and waiting for bird to arrive, its always good to be patient. It nearly always pays off in the end.

Keep posting these great bird pics.

Cheers

Michael

[avkomp]

Darryl,
the full sized image of this looks amazing.
I think the 700 sized image needs something done to make them pop.
ages ago I commented that the higher res images seemed to look less sharp than some of my lower res images when posted on the web
think a lot is to do with operator error in terms of pp.

this shot was at iso 400. on my notebook right now so I cant see the original images right now to comment on shutter speed but was the order of 1/1000 because the sky was bright

Steve

[kipper]

There is something definately a miss here, because if the original source is tack sharp and you're using bicubic or bicubic sharper in photoshop to resize, followed by a round of USM or Smart Sharpen then you should get very sharp edges and detail in the plumage.

[avkomp]

Darryl:
this is how the image came about

original shot with in camera sharpening off and adobe rgb

cropped sized to 1200 high (because my border action was written to work at that res.
usm of 150,1,0
size to 700
assigned profile srgb
saved as jpg

any comments as to ways to present this sharper would be appreciated.
particularly interested in what usm settings would be recommended in the above steps.

Steve

[avkomp]

and whilst at it

wonder what the best way to reduce image within cs2 is

bicubic??
bicubic sharper??

something else.??

Steeve

[kipper]

really depends but mostly I'll do bicubic sharper and then apply a round of selective (with feathering) smart sharpen to bring out plumage detail and check for any visible haloing around the edges.

[avkomp]

thanks darryl.

one of these days I will get the hang of it all.

gotta have a look into the working in lab colour idea for some non bird shots also.

Steve

[Alpha_7]

Steve - Not sure how I didn't post on this shot, I think I got distracted showing Katie the cute bird and never posted my thoughts. I really like this shot and if it wasn't for the foreground stick this would be an absolute winner. This shot seems to capture the birds 'character' better then nearly any I can recall seeing on the forum, so well done.

[marcotrov]

Great shot Steve. As has been mentioned in a perfect world the gorgeous portrait would have remained uncluttered by the shrouding twigs but then again I see a natural event. A bird in full voice in his habitat. Result nice environmental shot
cheers
marco

[avkomp]

thanks craig.

I was acid when he wouldnt move to the higher branch and in the clear (which was my original idea when I selected the spot to hide) I contemplated waiting but chose to shoot anyhow. I cant say whether my flashes frightened him off but if I had waited I believe I wouldnt have got anything.
I still smile when I look at this picture because I really do like it despite the twigs and stuff, but I will continue chasing the finches and other small birds cos it is way harder than you might imagine. I put in several hours on the weekend, 30mins plus of which lying in 2 foot high grassy stuff and except for the last 30 mins of the day took no shots at all.

on the bright side of course, I was outside and off the computers.

Steve

[Oneputt]

How did I miss this one? Great capture

[avkomp]

I miss more and more myself these days

we are getting bigger and bigger.

I have missed heaps of potw cos I guess I often only look at the threads on the main page.

although if I think about it I try to look at the new posts since last visit thingy. cept there are too many posts!!

Steve

[Manta]

I can't add anything to what others have said here, Steve, except that this is another wonderful image from your stunning collection. Twigs or no twigs? The recent Lewin's shot proved that a bit of cloning, done right, can really fix a shot but, in this case, I think it's just right the way it is.

[avkomp]

thanks simon.

I love the pose. I did think about doing a job on the bush like the honey eater but left it be.

I am hoping to get one out in the open again one day!! gives me something to do. (as if I didnt already) working on some guys notebook as I speak.
he is going away on business tomorrow so decides he can clean his notebook up a little. He did. except that it doesnt boot now.
this is after I had to spend 3 hrs on site today fixing their do it yourself efforts @ DNS

Steve

[Alpha_7]

thanks simon.

I love the pose. I did think about doing a job on the bush like the honey eater but left it be.

I am hoping to get one out in the open again one day!! gives me something to do. (as if I didnt already) working on some guys notebook as I speak.
he is going away on business tomorrow so decides he can clean his notebook up a little. He did. except that it doesnt boot now.
this is after I had to spend 3 hrs on site today fixing their do it yourself efforts @ DNS

Steve

Feel for you Steve, you don't have a DVD on as a distraction this time ?

[avkomp]

not this time.


This is a tad more hands on also.

has been a busy day for me. A few months ago there was this dns cache poisoning going around with a russian run site called 7sir7 which was able to cause lots of name servers to resolve just about anything to go to their site.
Initially noone knew what was going on, but to get around it I changed all my sites that were corrupted to a known uncorrupted name server. I basically left it like that after the poisonings subsided because all the sites were just working.
yesterday arvo the known good name server went down and this morning all my clients ring up with "we dont have the internet working" calls, so I had to access a bunch of servers and give em all their original name servers back again. but one site rang telstra and between them they figured it was a dns issue and the office support guy decided to fix it.
When that didnt work, they figured that the router must be the problem and that the master reset would fix that, and whilst at it the adsl password should be changed also and if that wasnt enough, that we should just be able to use the force or something to figure out what the password was.

It was only after I called bigpond tech support after reconfiguring the router but being unable to get an ip address from telstra that this came to light. anyway all but finished now. and will get some sleep in.

STeve

[Alpha_7]

Arrrrrrrrghhhhh!!!

Painful. I didn't suspect you'd be watching DVDs.