First bird shot

[Canon_For_Life]

well I thought I would sit around in my yard an get some shots of some birds
here's 2, more to come tommarow hopfully.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2332/1503361212_ea2ccdc093_o.jpg

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2341/1502501041_91c143bc59_o.jpg

C&C Welcome as always, im here to learn!
Thanks for looking!

[canonloader]

Two good shots, although a little positive exposure compensation or fill flash would have brought more light onto the bird. And then, crop out more of the image to make the bird look bigger and get rid of the blur on the left side. Also, these are a little too big for the forum rules of 800px on the longest side. :)

[rw2]

Now your hooked. Birds are great fun and always a challenge. If you use any form of PS you could try and lighten the shadows with that. I gave it a try and it does help with these shots. If you turn on image editing we could post our edits for you to see.

[jpalmer]

very good looks like a sparrow and IMO i would crop the second image so the birds off center to the left and just boost the brightness a tad.

[Canon_For_Life]

How would I go about turning on image posting?

The problem I have with cropping, is when I do it, the quality goes WAY down, Ill post an example later.

Thanks for the help and C&C guys.

[rw2]

When you are logged in go to the upper right and click on private messages.Then on that page on the left side under control panel click on edit profile. There on the bottom of that page you either click yes or no under image edit and repost permision.

[Canon_For_Life]

Ok thanks man.

[canonloader]

Here's how I would have cropped the original;

http://www.flashbax.com/test/sparrow1.jpg

Shooting in RAW is a lot better, as you have much more control over lighting and color, without adding noise. Once you convert to jpg, crop, resize and sharpen. :)

[Canon_For_Life]

Awsome, thanks for the tips! Much appriciated

[canonloader]

What program do you use? CS2 by any chance? I would have cropped it even tighter, if I had had the original image before you resized it. Once it's resized, cropping then resizing up to get to the 800px forum limit will make the image quality worse. But from the original, you could have filled the frame with just the bird and a little back ground and it would have looked really nice and sharp.

Better to use exposure compensation or a flash for fill though, than to correct lighting in a program. :)

[Canon_For_Life]

yeah, I use CS2

[canonloader]

Well, you have a lot of options then. Shoot in RAW and use ACR to edit the lighting, exposure and contrast, then CS2 to crop, resize and sharpen. Your already getting some good quality images from the XTi. Plenty good enough for some tight crops when needed. :)

[Canon_For_Life]

ok great, but wats ACR?

[canonloader]

ACR is Adobe Camera RAW. It comes with CS2. It should open if you just double click a RAW file in your hard drive. Or, open it from CS2.

[rw2]

Here is my try.