Pretty birdys

[Chris]

[Isac]

Hi Chris. It looks like they have been over processed OR your camera settings are not configured correctly. The saturation is way too much and I think a bit too much sharpening, which causes halos as you can see in #3. Try setting the camera top default settings and see how that goes. For birds in flight, start with Shutter Priority - shutter speed 1/2000th or higher, f:8 to f:11, AUTO ISO, spot focus and Matrix Mode.
You still need to display your images as Large or Full size. Have a look at other's posts to get an idea of what I mean. Get in touch if you need help with that.

[Chris]

Ok I will do that thank you

[avkomp]

hi Chris, I am mainly a bird shooter these days, so will offer my thoughts on these pix

firstly exif shows f14 on these. with a single subject such as these there is no reason for that. ideally you want to shoot as open as you can for sharpness. f14 hinders you 2 ways: firstly for any given given iso, it will reduce shutter speed on you and in bird photography, I believe shutter speed is king. some birds wings move surprisingly fast. so open the lens up to get your shutter speed up,
another drawback about a stopped down lens is lack of background separation.

as for exposure, your ibis in particular is dark and has significant haloing too.
the ibis looks to be suffering detail wise from a large crop too and I think the halos are likely from sharpening.

pointing to the sky like this and in aperture priority, I would expect to mostly be using plus compensation rather than minus. also on your nikon, have a look at the easy exposure compensation setting. with experience in seeing light, you will find you can quickly dial up plus or minus based on what you see.
( notice your birds on the clothes line suffer similarly. bright cloudy skies can cause your birdy to be under exposed by even 2 stops if you not careful)
the sky appears brighter than the bird and in matrix mode will fool the camera and underexpose a subject, particularly if it is small in the frame
shooting in better light will make a massive difference to your subjects too. lower sun will result in light under the wings instead of a bat signal shot.

I personally never use shutter priority, but doesnt mean you cant.

I use aperture priority or manual for all my shots.
if I am using aperture priority though, I keep an eye on what shutter speed is being offered to me. some experience here tells me if I like it or not and whether I need to use some sort of compensation. aperture priority is what the camera is on where I may get a pop up target and no time to adjust things.
manual means the camera does at it is told (rightly or wrongly) but if say you get a bird flying across between different backgrounds, then the exposure on the bird stays the same and isnt worried by changing backgrounds.

if bird photography is your thing, you can go to say a duck pond or maybe a boat ramp where there are repeatable targets and figure out what is going to work for you.
try to get closer to the subjects too.

try to shoot in good light and ideally with a wind behind you cos birds will tend to take off and land into the wind, but also will be slower and perhaps easy to focus on.
if you have a limit switch on your lens, use it. this will make refucussing quicker if you lose the subject.
also on your nikon, have a look at focus setup in menu A3, focus tracking with lock on. sometimes you can tweak that from 3 to 2 or something depending on how much background or foreground distractions exist.

anyhow, practice will make perfect

[Chris]

Thank you

[Ozzie_Traveller]

Hi Chris

I am not a 'birdie' as Stephen or Alan (wingz) are -- I'm one of those who gets it lucky from time to time
I like images #2 + #3 as they show the beautiful feathers / wings of the birds in flight
A 'well done' from me

Phil

[Chris]

Thank you