Australia Gardens, Cranbourne

[Grumpy John]

I had an outing at The Australia Gardens today with Spearmint and while I have a long way to go with my bird photography I feel that I am making good progress.
For some reason I had my camera set on AV at f2.8, totally unnecessary as it was a pretty sunny morning and I a fast shutter speed was not required, My shots lack sharpness because of the wide open lens and I was using multi point focusing, single point focus would have helped prevent focus on foliage in some shots. All the images have been heavily cropped.
C & C most welcome.

#1


#2 Nice sharp focus on the wing, too bad the antennae and body are out of focus.


#3 That long skinny beak sure comes in handy when going for the nectar.


#4


#5


#6 Focus is on the foliage in front of the bird. Should have used single point focus.

[Ironwood]

Were they all at f2.8 John ?
If so, that certainly wouldn’t have helped with your dof.
And as you pointed out, single point would probably have helped as well.
Sounds like you had a good day anyhow.

[Grumpy John]

Yes Brad, all at f2.8. I could have kicked myself when I got home, I was sure that I had stopped down to f8.0.
I did have a good time though, and learnt a valuable lesson, or two, at the same time. It's only a mistake if you don't learn from it

[Spearmint]

A shame having the lens at f/2.8 John, although if you get the eye in focus and using an APS-C body, you can getaway with it sometimes for birds.

[Grumpy John]

It was a valuable lesson Richard, always check your settings. You pointed out a couple of nice spots where the birds can usually be found so I can always nip up to the gardens and practice, practice, practice.

[Ironwood]

I have found the more you practice, the luckier you get

[Ironwood]

A shame having the lens at f/2.8 John, although if you get the eye in focus and using an APS-C body, you can getaway with it sometimes for birds.

Its the same with macro photography with little critters, even though the dof is so thin, as long as you have the eye in sharp focus, all is good. Its almost like an optical illusion that the whole critter is in focus sometimes.

[Isac]

Good job for your outing John and I think some valuable lessons learnt. I like #4 (New Holland Honey eater) - nice and sharp on the eye. #5 shows a bit of CA but I guess that's the crop. Keep practicing mate, I'm sure you will see marked improvements as you go along. It's an experimental thing to get it right for what you need to get good results and everyone uses different settings. I get great results using shutter priority but that's just me - I have my C2 and C3 set similarly with AP and TV so I can switch pretty quickly from BIF to still shots.

[Grumpy John]

Thanks for the words of encouragement Isac. #4 would have been a cracker at 5.6. I'm not seeing any CA (I assume you mean chromatic aberration) on #5, perhaps I need to calibrate my monitor. Where are you seeing it?

[Isac]

Only on the edges of the beak. That's why I said "it shows a bit". nothing major. The image was only 154k, maybe just around 250k might be better IQ for posting. Cheers

[Grumpy John]

Better? A bit of CA correction in ACR and I upped the file size a tad.

[Isac]

You Da Man

[Grumpy John]

I would be if the whole image was in focus

[Isac]

I reckon it would look a bit odd if the whole image was in focus.