At the Bird Feeder

I spend a fair amount of time taking pictures of birds.  Today’s photos are of a Tufted Titmouse:

ISO 640 50mm 0ev f/4.5 1/500

ISO640 50mm 0ev f/4.5 1/500

Kind of a funny name, but they are a cute little bird.

There were a few challenges to deal with here.  Because a bird like this is almost always in motion, I did use my tripod.  I am also using a fast shutter speed.  Really what I am doing with a fast shutter speed and tripod is attempting to freeze the action and every little bit helps.  I also raised the ISO to 640 to help with the light.  The f-stop you really have to think about in a photo like this.  The number has to be small enough to let in enough light.  However, if it is too low, you might not get the whole bird in focus.  On the flip side of that, if the number is too high, too much of the background will be in focus.  For this shot, I really wanted the background to be blurred enough so that you still know what it is, but aren’t  really spending a lot of time looking at it.

As far as post editing, for these shots I only cropped them and then left it at that.

So, do you have any bird photo tips you like to share? other comments? please leave them below.

Cheers!