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Inspiring and Supporting Photographers of Australian Birds

Australian Magpie

Photographed by

Glenn Pure on Wed 19th Jul, 2017 and uploaded on Thu 20th Jul, 2017 .

Resolution

1400x933

Viewed

428

26608

Comment

I've broken a few rules here (hopefully Georgina Steytler will approve) - focus has been on the bird's eye but most of the rest is out of focus. I have applied a small amount of 'lighten shadows' to the bird's eye. The bird was quite tame and walked right up to me and this is actually an uncropped frame. I'd be interested in any views and suggestions.

Equipment

Canon 80D with EF 100-400mm Mark 2, handheld at 400mm
1/250 sec, f7.1, ISO 500.
Initially processed in Canon DPP 4 to crop, adjust exposure and lighting and perform noise reduction. A 16 bit TIFF file was created from the RAW DPP image and finished in PSE (Adobe Photoshop Elements v9) where further noise reduction was applied to the main subject using Neat Image plugin for PSE. The background was noise reduced and the main subject sharpened.

Location

Urambi Hills Reserve, Australian Capital Territory

Keywords

male, adult

This image is not available for download.

Ian Wilson	2017-07-20 15:28:22	Hi Glenn, It's a wet day here, thanks for giving me something to think about. I will begin by share my general observations about 'head shots'. I happen to like this kind of image very much as it provides one with an unusual opportunity to examine the surface anatomy of birds in some detail. I particularly like ultra close-up views of bird's eyes but I have never come across anyone who shares my taste for this kind of image. Close ups can be both scientifically interesting and beautiful. However, I am well aware that other people do not like head shots and have a strong preference for images that show the complete bird. I think the best head shots have the face of the bird sharply in focus back to at least the eye; the bill details are just as interesting as the eye. As you know, I have one of the Custom Shooting Modes on my cameras set up to capture images of birds that come close unexpectedly to the camera. I have the aperture set to f/11 and feel sure I would have used it had I been in your shoes. This would have given more depth of field and with a bit of luck an image with both the bill and the eye in sharp focus. My rule of thumb would be to avoid having any part of the bird in front of the region of best focus. Hope this makes sense. Cheers, Ian
Glenn Pure	2017-07-22 10:12:17	Thanks for your comments Ian. I hope the weather is on the mend down your way. Send some rain here. We need it. I agree that it would have been good to get more of the bird in focus, particularly the bill and that's what I'd normally try to achieve - hence this being more of an experimental shot that has broken some rules. In this case, I had no hope of getting much more in focus. Even if I'd been able to stop down to f11 or f16 (shutter speed and/or ISO would have then been an issue), the depth of field would have been a little better but not enough to get a lot more in focus (at least according to the online depth of field calculators). The bird was very close - maybe only 1.5 metres away and depth of field gets worse the closer the subject, as you know. This was an opportunistic shot. On the other hand, if the bird had not been so friendly and kept it's distance, I could have achieved more in focus but would have had to crop hard to get the same framing - there would have been some cost in detail then. Always trade-offs! Thanks again and I'd be keen to hear other opinions too.

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	10/283 in Critique Gallery
	395/1584 by Glenn Pure
	42/148 of Australian Magpie
	262/790 of Woodswallows, Currawongs, Butcherbirds and Magpie
	10663/34487 Overall
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