intro-birding-canon (1 Viewer)

[robbyuk]

hello to all,i was searching for places to visit with my camera to take some bird shots last night and came across birdforum,after browsing the forums and galleries i realised what a great tool these sites are for exchanging and gaining helpful tips and so on for bird photography,i have had a canon dslr for about 18 mnths now and just upgraded from my first camera[350dto 40d]although i have learnt a great deal over this period,i am still struggling with most aspects of bird/nature photography,espeicially with focus and sharpness of my images,some of my latest attempts can be seen on flickr here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/65106779@N00/
so any tips,advice or general discussions on this subject would be greatly appreiciated,
i am a lancashire lad and been intrested in all british wildlife scince a very young age,i have a fairly good knowledge about british birds and spent a lot of my teen years on a friends farm hatching and raising all kinds of poultry ducks and fowl.any way i think i have said enough for now phew!! lol
hows that for a long introductory.

 

[keithyed]

hy robbyuk and welcome to the forums. I am not a great photographer but i do like some of your pics especially some of the sky shots.To my eyes the bird shots look good but appears to be some movement on some.What lenses are u using and are you using photoshop to adjust brightness etc.Any how you will soon get some more professional comments i am sure.

keith

 

[IanF]

Welcome to Bird Forum :t:

You've certainly found the right place for like minded people interested in bird and nature as well as taking photos. Quite a few members are using the Canon 40D myself included

I look forward to more of your posts and maybe a few photos in the Gallery :t:

 

[John N]

Hi, welcome to BirdForum.Enjoy yourself here.

 

[robbyuk]

thanks for the welcome,i am using the older version 70-300mm f4-5.6 is canon lense sometimes with 1.5 converter,i do tend to compromise shutter speed for iso speed and rarely shoot over 400 iso,hmm food for thought,i also tend to use sutter priority mode when shooting birds and always shoot in raw and tweak levels,contrast,curves and unsharpmask in photoshop.
Ianf how do you find the live view on your 40d ive been using it for fine focusing on my bird feeders with a decent amount of success?

 

[IanF]

thanks for the welcome,i am using the older version 70-300mm f4-5.6 is canon lense sometimes with 1.5 converter,i do tend to compromise shutter speed for iso speed and rarely shoot over 400 iso,hmm food for thought,i also tend to use sutter priority mode when shooting birds and always shoot in raw and tweak levels,contrast,curves and unsharpmask in photoshop.
Ianf how do you find the live view on your 40d ive been using it for fine focusing on my bird feeders with a decent amount of success?

Mostly I use the camera on AV setting at ISO400 though a few tmes I've gone up to ISO1000 when it's been really dull. Using noise filter software such as Neat Image or PictureCooler gets rid of the grainess quite well.

I've only tinkered with live view a couple of times. I think it may be better than it is on later models - I tend to take quite a few photos and I was a little worried about the over-heating sensor problem when using live view so I've tended to steer clear of it. For focus I tend to rely on autofocus using the centre focus point. Some people have had problems using this when using a teleconverter but so far it's not been a problem for me - in fact it's a lot better than when I was uing one with the 20D.

 

[postcardcv]

welcome to BF, I look forward to seeing some of your shots in the gallery

 

[robinm]

Hi and welcome to BirdForum :t:

 

[a.dancy]

Hi and a warm welcome to you.

 

[Mark Bruce]

Hi, a warm welcome and good to have you with us :t:!