Blackbird

[dougied]

My first attempt at wildlife photography. It's not as easy as it looks is it.

http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f96/aceuggy/Wild%20Birds/IMG_0069.jpg

[Shamal]

Very well done, Dougie. A male Blackbird is a challenge to expose correctly but it looks fine here. A great start and visually hard to fault.

Looking at the exif data, I may have been tempted to raise the ISO setting a bit, which would give you a bit more freedom to close the aperture down an f-stop while still having a good shutter-speed. You will tend to get slightly better results when shooting at f8 or more than having the aperture wide open at f6.3

Your camera should still produce acceptably clean images up to ISO800, although I would try to keep it ISO400 for the most part. ISO160 (which this was taken with) produces wonderful clean images but I do wonder if there's any real benefit at this setting versus something a touch higher)

Raising the ISO will help when light isn't so good but give you faster shutter-speeds.

best regards,
Shamal

[Maisie]

Great shot, Dougie!! You've made a very good start indeed with the new camera. My only question would be where you had the focal point set. I could be wrong, but it looks to me like the chest is *slightly* sharper than the eye, but it's still very good quality all round!

[dougied]

Thanks guys you are very kind. Maisie, to be honest I was lucky to get him in the frame at all he was hopping about so much :eek:. Practise, I hope, will make perfect.

[Gandalf]

dougied: not bad at all.

Cheers,