Show your Bird Portraits

For amusement, some Blue Tits were flitting around in an apple tree a little later, in deep shade. Here is a shot at iso 8000 pushed through 1.33 ev, equivalent to an overall iso of 20,000. The only noise reduction is DxO DeepPRIME at 60 on the luminescence slider. The high iso performance of the R5 is quite acceptable - the image is a 100% crop. There is probably an ant in its beak.


View attachment 198165
Beautiful shot Alan! first time I have never seen a immure Blue Tit shot posted. Thanks for sharing.
 
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ISv

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You have got real talent for this genre and are taking some great shots so welcome to one of the most enjoyable pastimes.
You forgot to add "and one of the very addictive - resulting in rather expensive":). Otherwise I agree 100% with the sentence!
 
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ISv

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Oh, thank You Alan.
There were a lot more of them in the air, but even further away. This was the closest i got. I wonder if there is som kind of tent or so that one can "hide" in, with the camera, tripod and perhaps a little chair. That would be a lot more discrete than me running around the shore with a tank-of-a-lens and not that smooth :)
I could sit for hours if there were such an option. Perhaps with some coffee and a sandwich, I could easily spend a whole day out there in the fields/shores.
Look at the second link from Raptors. I can't recommend the LensCoat - I had it (may be it's still somewhere at home...) and hate it. Used it few times without any success: birds are still seeing you and in windy weather that cover is more disturbance than help!!!. And it's hot under it - I mean very hot! Sweden is not the hottest country that I know (I was there for ~1.5 years - Stockholm) but still... I had also tiny retractable chair to sit but all this combo was very uncomfortable.
On that second link you will see other options. I never tried one of them but they seems to offer room for chair and backpack with coffee, WATER! and snacks.
The best way to use any of these (according to my opinion! - not practice) is to leave them 1-2 days on proper spot for the birds to get familiar with the presence of the "object" and enter when it's still dark. If you don't have secure spot to leave your tent - go there when it's dark, mount and wait (and enjoy your time in the nature!).
 
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Look at the second link from Raptors. I can't recommend the LensCoat - I had it (may be it's still somewhere at home...) and hate it. Used it few times without any success: birds are still seeing you and in windy weather that cover is more disturbance than help!!!. And it's hot under it - I mean very hot! Sweden is not the hottest country that I know (I was there for ~1.5 years - Stockholm) but still... I had also tiny retractable chair to sit but all this combo was very uncomfortable.
On that second link you will see other options. I never tried one of them but they seems to offer room for chair and backpack with coffee, WATER! and snacks.
The best way to use any of these (according to my opinion! - not practice) is to leave them 1-2 days on proper spot for the birds to get familiar with the presence of the "object" and enter when it's still dark. If you don't have secure spot to leave your tent - go there when it's dark, mount and wait (and enjoy your time in the nature!).

That's great tips. Thank You!
 
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AlanF

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AlanF

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A couple of shots with the RF 800mm + 1.4xTC on the R5. As John has shown first using charts and then many fine "redbud" shots, it's a sharp lens. These could have been posted in the Dragonflies thread: a Pied Wagtail with Damselflies flies that he was catching and feeding to a fledgling.

309A4545-DxO_1120mm_pied_wagtail+damselfly_LS2.jpg309A4575-DxO_1120mm_pied_wagtail+2_common_damselfly_LS2.jpg
 
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AlanF

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The downside for me is my penchant for dragonflies, and the minimum focal distance of the lens is 6m, nearly 20ft. However, I can still get decent images. I'll post one of a 4-Spotted Chaser here to show a characteristic of the lens: some terrible bokeh for out-of-focus specular highlights that diffractive optics can give with a series of concentric rings. I have never seen this with my 400mm DO II or Nikon 500mm f/5.6 PF. Canon has cut corners in its design here.

309A4566-DxO_1120mm_4-spot_chaser_dragonfly+bokeh_balls_LS2.jpg
 
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Jack Douglas

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usern4cr

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Lovely series. I especially like the second picture. Nicely done, usern4cr.
Lovely shots John! I couldn't resist buying a used RF 800/11 at a ridiculously low price, and it arrived today. It's an interesting lens, with pros and cons. I'll post a few piccies next.
Thanks, Click & AlanF - I really like your Dragonfly photos. I haven't noticed the ringed bokeh with the 800 f11, but I don't think I've had any bright point-source backgrounds to see them if they're there. I'll have to try to get some specular backgrounds and see what it looks like. The 800 f11 is really lightweight and sharp for such an inexpensive lens, but it is only for things pretty far away. I do miss the close focus ability a lot with it.
 
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macrunning

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The downside for me is my penchant for dragonflies, and the minimum focal distance of the lens is 6m, nearly 20ft. However, I can still get decent images. I'll post one of a 4-Spotted Chaser here to show a characteristic of the lens: some terrible bokeh for out-of-focus specular highlights that diffractive optics can give with a series of concentric rings. I have never seen this with my 400mm DO II or Nikon 500mm f/5.6 PF. Canon has cut corners in its design here.

View attachment 198188
I actually enjoy the bokeh. Helps give the image some character. It's not terribly distracting. It can always be toned back in post processing. Great Shot! What was the f-stop?
 
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macrunning

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I can tell it's June...I had a full contingent of mosquitoes and other bugs following me around on my walk. Only managed one loop before I had to run for my car and avoid being eaten alive!

Here's a couple of birds I've not seen out there until this weekend...

Tufted Titmouse
View attachment 198166

This brown thrasher was mostly hiding, but I stuck around just long enough for it to come out and pose in the openView attachment 198167
View attachment 198168

And the ubiquitous Great Blue Heron overseeing his domain...or just eyeballing me as I intruded. I noticed the missing toe only during processing in DxO.
View attachment 198169
Beautiful birds and shots!
 
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macrunning

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Today was really hard day for me: hot, humid (a lot of wind but not helping!). Insects where somewhere else. The birds - almost the same!
The only thing I got there was a juveniles of the Japanese White-Eye (family): not rare siting (not at all!) but when there is something more interesting you simply don't shoot them and I think these are my best (? still have to go into the folder to compare:sleep:). Anyway - these are only my photos from today and I will try to show why some visitors are reporting an Amakihi on totally unbelievable spots here (like near the beach :ROFLMAO::cry:).
On the first two photos you can see the white-ring just developing . The second bird (third photo) was significantly forward (same nest!). And the last photo is an adult - this is an old photo...
There are several things that separate the Japanese White-eye from the Amakihi but in some light (and if you have no experience!) it may not be that easy. Many people are just looking at the white ring around the eyes! No ring (bad photo or very young bird!) - "must be" Amakihi!!! View attachment 198137View attachment 198138View attachment 198140View attachment 198141
The tones in that 3rd image are gorgeous!
 
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macrunning

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This is the end of the better redbud photos I took with the R5 & RF 800 lens.
I was very happy with the image quality from this long yet light & affordable lens (relatively speaking since it is a RF lens).
(After the next 2 photos I decided to try the same experiment by adding the RF 1.4TC to the RF 800mm f11 lens and I'll continue with some of those photos below)


White throated sparrow:
View attachment 198091


With help from Dockland (thanks!), I think this is an American Tree Sparrow:
View attachment 198094



Now I'll start with more redbud photos with the R5 and RF 800mm f11 with RF 1.4TC added.
I was curious what IQ you could get with it. I'm still on my back porch at a distance close to the 6m MFD of the 800mm lens.
Often times, this distance was a bit too close for some of the larger birds (EG doves), but that's also part of the test.

In post, one thing I'd like to mention is that I've found DXO PL4 gets really slow when you open up a file of a thousand or so images to grade and work on. So slow that I was forced to look for alternatives to grade them down to a reasonable number of just the best ones to use PL4 on. I chose FastRaw Viewer for this purpose, and am extremely happy with how well & fast it can view the raw files and also grade them to parse them down to just the best. It costs almost nothing and is amazingly configurable to taste, so if you ever want faster raw viewing/grading I highly recommend it.

These are still with PL4 with cropping to taste, +1 lens sharpness and deep prime output, with little to no other adjustments done.

House finch:View attachment 198097

View attachment 198098

View attachment 198099


With help from AlanF (thanks!), a Starling:
View attachment 198100

View attachment 198101


Carolina Chickadee:
View attachment 198102


Cheers.
Great set of photos!
 
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