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one of my fave birds.

up close with the 24G

Untitled by .Chris.K, on Flickr

iso5000 300/2.8

Don't f*ck with me buddy by .Chris.K, on Flickr

pretty damn disgusting ! 300/2.8

Lunch by .Chris.K, on Flickr

Chris

Love #2, am bothered by the OOF beak in #1 and #3 almost made me regret having just eaten

Yep, I am following Peter on this one - #2 is the go.

Another vote for #2......captive birds I am guessing? The day old chick being the give away!

Yeah it's at symbio.
Agree about the beak, how do I focus stack ? Is it easy ?

Beak and all...#1 is a winner for me....all in those eyes!

Whilst #2 is awesome (it really is) I love the idea of #1 - how close is that (and how???) and Cam is right that eye is fantastic

Rooz wrote:Agree about the beak, how do I focus stack ? Is it easy ?

Yes (and no ) - yes if you can keep both your camera (tripod) and the bird completely still for about 60 to 120 seconds whilst you take all the frames

Rooz wrote:Agree about the beak, how do I focus stack ? Is it easy ?

Exif suggests you were at f/2. Going smaller would have helped a lot before even considering focus stacking.

As you were at 1/320s, f/2 and ISO 100, you could have gone to 1/80s, f/8 and ISO 400.

It's bloody close Rodney, mfd which would be I suppose 25cm or so. Was preparing for a nip on the fingers !

Andrew, I tried up to f11 bit what happened was the tip of the beak is still blurred and it was even more distracting. I thought it would be less distracting to have the whole beak blurred. I was cursing myself at the time for not reading up on focus stacking more thoroughly before hand.

I think #3 is the one as they stand. No technical quibbles and a real slice of life in the wild.

Remorhaz wrote:

Rooz wrote:Agree about the beak, how do I focus stack ? Is it easy ?

Yes (and no ) - yes if you can keep both your camera (tripod) and the bird completely still for about 60 to 120 seconds whilst you take all the frames

I don't agree with that. If the bird's not moving and your shutter speed is high enough, you can use manual focus and quickly whip off several frames. Hand held should be no problem though tripod or monopod is safer. You just need to be careful you don't change your point of view. Just take the images and worry about what happens next later.
(For example I took this image (that you can zoom right into) hand held using 155 exposures including panorama, HDR and focus bracketing. It surprised me that it worked.)

Then if you have Lightroom and Photoshop (CS3 or later, I think) it's a case of:

Select the images
Right-click to Edit in/ Open as Layers in Photoshop...
In Photoshop, select the layers then
Edit/ Auto-blend layer/ Stack images

Dead simple.

That will work for an image like this. Where it gets complex is where you have fine elements in the foreground and want the background in focus as well. This is because the shot(s) for the background will have out-of-focus foreground elements that are larger than the foreground elements in focus. Therefore the distant views near the edge of the foreground objects have to be out of focus. Nothing will automate that for you. You have to use masking and cloning manually.

Helicon Focus may be an option but as long as you have Photoshop I don't see the point. I tried a difficult task on it and did no better than Photoshop and it costs $200, rather a lot for a niche product.

in no. 3 it looks like the bird has changed his mind about eating to!! lol actually looks like a Henson puppet character, great shots though

thanks murray. appreciate that quick tutorial. given i basically never have a tripod on me i think im gonna struggle. how the heck do these guys do it with bugs in macro if the thing cant move ???

Freeze them, just not enough to kill them.

... and use cameras with much smaller sensors for way more depth of field (I know a few who use certain ultrazoom compacts for incredible bug marcos)

Shorter macro lens (60mm?) external lighting (R1C1...or SB400/600/700/800/900/910 on a SC-17/28/29)