My first bird pic

[FlyingSquirrel]

I noticed a few birds in the backyard today, and although I don't really have a "bird worthy" long lens, I pulled out the camera and gave it a whirl with my Sigma 150mm macro x 1.6 crop sensor on the 30D. Luckily my subject was not too far away, and I was upstairs looking out the window for a good angle.

Since I've recently got back into photography, I've been learning a lot, especially from these forums. Until a couple weeks ago, I had never heard of "back button focusing"...well I gave it a try today and it was awesome! I almost felt like I knew what I was doing, LOL

One disappointing moment occurred when one of the birds flew directly at me and landed on the roof not a few feet above me. Although it appeared to happen in slow motion in my mind, in reality I had not 1/2 second to respond, and being a noob I wasn't ready. The bird flying straight at me with its wings open as it slowed itself for the landing could have been an incredible shot

This was my first real go at photographing birds, and I must say, it was rather exhilarating! Now if only I could afford some high quality telephoto glass...

C&C always appreciated!

Northern Flicker Woodpecker (Colaptes auratus)
Canon 30D, Sigma 150mm, 1/350s @ f/3.5, ISO 320. Relatively hard crop. Selective sharpening. Some background cloning to remove distracting stuff, hopefully the job is decent. I used the OS feature on this lens, in combo with burst mode.

[gcowan]

Hi Matt,

This is very nice and a very handsome bird. Why do you need heavy artillary.

Graham

[jeeperman]

Nice and sharp image of a Female Northern Flicker Matt. The male will be more colorful with red on his face. Birds can quickly become an addiction. Enjoy....

[rtbaum]

May I add costly and aggravating as well....

[oleleclos]

A very nice picture with good colour, sharpness and detail. I'm no ornithologist, so I'll leave those comments to others.

Whatever you did to the background is not obvious, so well done, but I think I would have cropped a bit more off the bottom, that's all by way of criticism.

[Bobobird]

Having done so well you are on the way to the same addiction that some of us here have.

[FlyingSquirrel]

Thank you all for your feedback. Per Ole's suggestion, I wanted to see how it would look with a closer crop, shown below. I like the more in-your-face nature of this crop, while conversely I also like the originally posted version for the sake that it feels more natural and has some "breathing room." In this version, I added a very small amount of increased color saturation, as the more I looked at it, the flatter it was looking to me before.

Graham, I'm interested in the "big glass" because it makes it easier to get a decent magnification on the subject. This bird shot of mine is a VERY heavy crop; you are looking at probably 5% of the actual photograph. While it looks fine on a monitor, this kind of cropping is too severe for professional or print use. I'd like to get more frame filling shots right off the bat, so the heavy artillery will allow that (not to mention they usually are faster lenses anyway).

Thanks again to all!

[Soozie B]

Hi Matt

This bird is a very beautiful specimen. Well done for capturing such a detailed shot. From one almost bird addict to hopefully another lol

[FlyingSquirrel]

Thank you Soozie Your shot of the Blue Wren is great. What a stunning bird!

[Soozie B]

thanks Matt,

They are a very pretty, tiny little bird that is super fast and is very hard to capture, so I was pleased I even managed a shot let alone a half decent one :-)