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I've never appreciated the beauty of the common sparrow until now.


Taken with the Nikkor 200-400VR at 400mm, f/8. No TC on at the time, but I'm wishing I had more reach now!!

The subject was a fair distance away, and I snapped it thinking either the lens was capable of resolving the fine details or that I had room to crop with 6MP on my side. As shown, it's a 100%-sized crop from the capture. The JPG conversion made it slightly fuzzy and introduced noise into the sky, but the original still lacks detail in the front chest feathers (I'm quite peeved at myself about that). Wish I more skill to capture the stunning beauty of this bird. When the camera and lens are the very best, the only thing to blame for missing the shot is the user.

Edit (6 Feb): replaced orig pic with "better" version, ie. preserved highest quality settings throughout workflow to try to minimise detail loss, de-noised with Noise Ninja 2 PS plug-in and applied USM (250,0.3,5).

Isn't it amazing how one never realises the beauty in such a common creature until one takes the time to look deeply...

Any PP other than the crop?

Well for a 100% crop I think that's fantastic. Sparrows are quick little birds. Don't be so hard on yourself!

That 200-400 is awesome!

Yes, the lens is amazing. Anyone with a large sum of spare cash should definitely consider one!

Updated pic with PP (basically turned sharpning off in NC and applied USM in PS, saved as higher quality JPG for upload). I've tried all sorts of things to try and improve the sharpness & detail of the image post capture. eg. upsizing the NEF dimensions before JPG conversion, to no avail - you can't create detail where none exists. I guess I'll have to live with a less than optimal capture.

Onyx - I think you were lucky to get this sweet shot anyway. There appears to be very little DOF at f/8 - but that is one mutha of a lens

A sparrow is a mouse that flies
A mouse that sings
A mouse with wings