Feeding Coal Tit
I am still working up to taking pictures of birds. I never seem to be able to get close enough to get a real close up, although this image of a very windblown coal tit at the bird feeder in our garden didn’t require too much cropping.
I reduced the exposure by about a stop, which restored a lot of detail in the seeds and white feathers on the bird. I also moved the black point right to increase contrast slightly. More detail was brought out using Definition and I increase saturation slightly using Vibrancy. The colours were further developed using a s-curve. I then used separate treatments of the Highlights and Shadows sliders. The first tackled both highlights and shadows. The second pulled back further detail from the highlights only. The image was then cropped and sharpened.
Filed under: Aperture, Colour | 1 Comment
Tags: Aperture, Birds, Colour, GF-1
One Picture, One Day 
not bad…but you still need a longer lens. For small birds nothing short of 600mm plus 1.4 extender is really long enough…and then you need to work from a hide to get frame filling shots. My digiscoped images of birds this size are taken at equivalent focal lengths between 1500 and 4000mm. 🙂 It is not just about magnification…it is practically impossible to get correct exposure unless the bird fills the frame.