Ashy Crowned Sparrow Lark - Female

[Supreet Sahoo]

Camera Model Canon EOS 7D
Tv( Shutter Speed ) 1/800
Av( Aperture Value ) 7.1
Exposure Compensation 0
ISO Speed 400
Lens EF300mm f/4L IS USM +1.4x

[Mrudul Godbole]

Nice head turn and eye contact. The green background looks nice. You could have tried a still narrower aperture to get more details in the beak. Nicely captured. Thanks for sharing.

[Sabyasachi Patra]

The eye contact is nice. Nicely diffused background. It is good that you were at a the eye level of the subject. Some more depth of field would have been even better. Which 1.4x TC are you using?

Cheers,
Sabyasachi

[Supreet Sahoo]

I use a Canon 2nd generation TC on the Canon 300mm f4

[Sabyasachi Patra]

I too have the 1.4x II TC. That works well with the 300mm f4 L IS USM lens. Sadly I have now disposed my 300mm F4 IS lens after long years of faithful service.

Check with a static subject regarding the minimum shutter speed where you can get sharp shots.

In this image, which AF point did you use? You can check that by opening your raw file in either Zoombrowser or Digital Photo Professional (the software that came with canon).

[Supreet Sahoo]

This is where the focus point was. Should have really tried getting it closer to the eye area with F8

[Sabyasachi Patra]

I was suspecting that.

If you look at the size of the focus point, it covers a wide area from the lower part of the neck to nearly the tail. That should be atleast more than an inch and a half. So the camera can focus anywhere in that region.

To get finer focus, you can try to manually move the focus ring a bit. Unfortunately, this can be done in the larger telephoto lenses only. So in this case, you can check by rotating the focus manually and see if you are getting a better focus. If so, you can either choose to use manual or just raise the camera a bit and fire.

Also, due to the small size of the bird in the frame, it becomes very difficult to get the right focus even when focusing manually. If you were shooting with a support like tripod, then I would have suggested the use of live view to get finer focusing.

The problem comes when we are handholding and the bird is ready to fly. In such situations, a narrow aperture like f9/f10 would have been much better.

The reason for my questions were to analyse, so that theoretically you are ready to tackle any situation. These decision making has to happen in a moment. So if you keep on analysing then it becomes intuitive and your photography starts improving by leaps and bounds.

Cheers,
Sabyasachi

[Bhargava Srivari]

An interesting discussion here. Agree that a narrower aperture would have been even better. All the same, nice angle here..and the green BG adds to the image.

tfs