Battling a severe case of cabin fever, I decided to walk to the local park that is heavily wooded to see what I could capture. First thing I learned is that photographing birds in dense woods is tough...the lighting is quite challenging. Really had to crank up the ISO in most cases which impacted the image quality (Nikon D5600 crop sensor). It was tough to find a subject that would look good given the circumstances. I wound up looking for areas where the sun shone through in hopes that a bird would decide to show up. Got really lucky as a cardinal landed on a spot that was backlit by some sun light. You can almost see the expression on his face as he puffs up his feathers.
This bird photography is quite addicting...thinking about investing in a full frame camera which will hopefully give me better low light performance.
Anyways, hope you enjoy the picture and critical feedback is always welcome as I'm relatively new to the hobby!
I know exactly where you are coming from and experiencing; I've been recently bitten by the 'birding' shutter bug myself. I'm running with a Nikon d5500 and switch between either my 70-300mm kit lens or the Nikkor 200-500mm "beast" lens. Also same, woodland area bird photography; it really is challenging given the low light conditions (coupled with high'ish shutter speeds and high'ish ISO) and little sticks and branches everywhere. heh. I'm also looking into a newer, better, camera, currently leaning towards the z6.
I've been using auto iso capped at 1600, which is fairly noisy for my sensor but DeNoise (the software) cleans it right up. I also found that using the pop-up flash can add quite a lot of light even at telephoto distances, but the shutter caps at 1/200, so only for birds not moving.... Though I prefer natural light more.
I'm rambling but just wanted to mention I'm right there with you, great hobby. :)
Thanks for your comments Joe. I think I'll try the pop-up flash next time...I never thought to try that due to the distnaces involved.
I use crop camera for my wildlife photography and I do not complain. I got my ISO set to auto ranging from 100-6400 on sony A6400 and A6600. You can clean ISO in post with ease in Darktable 3.0 (I guess same applies to LR). I was surprised how good noise removal is there. I have to try this with my older photos shot with Canon 200D, which were terrible with noise levels even with ISO 800 and below. Might be the case that D5600 introduces more noise than never crop cameras (for sure less then Canon 200D), but this photo looks very good in terms of noise.
Crop camera gives you +1,5x reach which is huge benefit for wildlife especially when photographing small birds.. The best solution is to use 2 bodies (APS-C and FF) for the same mount system, which gives more flexibility.
I'm between 2 and 3 on this photo, closer to 3. I know how hard is to find good composition in real environment with birds especially in the forest.
I appreciate the feedback! I use a Sigma 150-600 when combined with my D5600 gives me some pretty good reach. The problem is when I'm in the woods and have to bump up the ISO...many of my images are unusable. In this particular shot, the sun was shining on the subject which allowed me to reduce the ISO. I'm going to look into some good denoise optons...I use LR but not crazy about my previous denoise attempts.
I'm looking at either a D750 or D780 for a FF option. Looking at the pros and cons of each...leaning towards the D750 at this point.
I recently got hit by the "birding bug" as Joe so aptly put it. I am also working with the D5600 and 70-300mm kit lens. Feel free to check out my profile for other images, but here is one that I took that has a similar subject, even if it is the female. I do like your image greatly. The focus is great on the eye, and the extra 300mm you have on me greatly helps. I find that under most conditions, I can easily deal with noise on the D5600 up to about 2500 before it becomes too bad. Great shot and I hope you keep shooting!
https://fstoppers.com/photo/484447
On a side subject of ISO noise... While in Lightroom develop (or camera raw), use a mask (mask the entire image) and use the Moire slider to between 9 and 20... It will remove the color noise, now only Luminance noise is left and normal noise reduction can take care of that.
I know Moire is for, well Moire in an image, but it seems Nikon color noise falls into the same set of colors.
That's certainly an interesting approach. I will see if it works on ON1 Photo Raw, but I don't actually use lightroom for my editing, so it may not work as well. Thanks for the tip!
I find it interesting that you were looking for a place where the sun shone through.
Most bird photographers, when photographing under a woodland canopy, do the opposite - they try to photograph the bird in an area that is completely shaded.
It is interesting to me that you broke convention and tried something so different than what most experienced bird photographers do.