Birding help

As the others have said; get your shutter speed up (at LEAST 1/800, particularly while you're getting used to the lens). Do so by amping your ISO up quite a bit - these new sensors really can handle it, believe us The min 1600 is a solid recommendation, but any more I just shoot Manual on Auto ISO and adjust Exposure Compensation on the fly if things look too dark in the VF. I am shooting the RF 800 on the R5 and sometimes with the RF 1.4 TC....Auto ISO works beautifully. The ring on the RF lens defaults to EC adjustment and works quite smoothly.

Congrats on the new setup; trust in your gear and it'll server you very well

Snydremark wrote in post #19323274
As the others have said; get your shutter speed up (at LEAST 1/800, particularly while you're getting used to the lens). Do so by amping your ISO up quite a bit - these new sensors really can handle it, believe us The min 1600 is a solid recommendation, but any more I just shoot Manual on Auto ISO and adjust Exposure Compensation on the fly if things look too dark in the VF. I am shooting the RF 800 on the R5 and sometimes with the RF 1.4 TC....Auto ISO works beautifully. The ring on the RF lens defaults to EC adjustment and works quite smoothly.

Congrats on the new setup; trust in your gear and it'll server you very well

I will have to try setting the ring to EC. Have not messed with that control ring yet.

gewb wrote in post #19323253
Replies noted and I agree. But a little post processing could help. May I post my version of your pic?

Certainly!

Just playing a bit in Luminar 4 and NIK, er, DxO Viveza 3.

gewb wrote in post #19323524
Just playing a bit in Luminar 4 and NIK Viveza 3.

Hosted photo: posted by gewb in
./showthread.php?p=193​23524&i=i9387836
forum: Birds

Wow, that really helps the image. My PP skills are very, very basic. Something I need to work on for sure

I would suggest you do out of the car shots with a steady tri-pod, maybe bump the ISO a bit.

gewb wrote in post #19323253
Replies noted and I agree. But a little post processing could help. May I post my version of your pic?

I totally agree with post processing. What a difference that would make.

This is also a female.

canonloader wrote in post #19323818
This is also a female.

Interesting. How can you tell?

Males have a dark spot below the eye and the corner of the mouth only comes back about to the center of the eyeball. Here's a great explanation.

https://www.livescienc​e.com …le-mom-dad-explainer.html

Cool. Learned something new today. Thanks for the link.

canonloader wrote in post #19323818
This is also a female.

Mitch!!!

Long time no see. It’s good to see you here. I hope you are all right?

duckster wrote in post #19323130
Thank you! I will do that. I guess the f11 aperture had me psyched out a bit

I'm a commercial product photographer, and when I first started shooting wildlife, I almost had a nervous breakdown trying to raise my ISO higher, it really is hard o get out of that mindset! I shoot with the Eos R, which isn't nearly as good as your r6, and I shoot at 1000 ISO all the time - it seems to be the sweet spot for me with regards to shutter/ISO combinations. I will go much higher than that if need be.

You have much more leeway with your r6, don't be afraid to play with it.

I have the ISO set to the control ring for quick access through the viewfinder -I find it really helps with on-the-fly changes. Also have the AF points set to another button so I can go with a larger or smaller AF when needed. In my case it's the multifunction bar, but the R's are so very customisable.

canonloader wrote in post #19323843
Males have a dark spot below the eye and the corner of the mouth only comes back about to the center of the eyeball. Here's a great explanation.

https://www.livescienc​e.com …le-mom-dad-explainer.html

While I agree here, be careful about attributing the field marks used for specific birds to all birds of the species. It is not always the case that males will have a dark spot (note the link actually says Pa's got a pure white head), and the corner of the mouth bit is frequently difficult to 'diagnose' in the field as the direction they are facing can easily mess with the perspective on that. Even the research experts (David Hancock, rehabbers at O.W.L, etc) have a fair bit of difficulty without being able to actually examine a bird or seeing them together in the wild.

Regarding the OP; a couple of other tips I would throw out there:
- The eye is most important. If you don't have solid "eye contact" (the viewer cannot clearly see at least one of the eyes), it hurts the image most of the time.
- Try to have your subject off-center in the frame; whether you're lucky enough to be able to frame it that way or by some creative cropping in post. Look up "rule of thirds" for one, more info on one basic technique around this.
- Try to include action/display of unique behaviors, markings, environments around your subject for added "punch" to your content when you can.
- Especially with high res sensors nowdays, make use of cropping to get rid of some less relevant and frequently distracting elements of the image.

Here's a *super* rough pass I did on your original shot to illustrate a couple of those points as related to it. Feel free to let me know if you prefer to have the edit removed. You have a decent starting shot there, aside from the severe underexposure. This was some cropping for composition, boost exposure, light tweaking of the tone curve to help the head stand out from the b/g and some heavy-handed sharpening just to illustrate. The results should be much easier to make look nice on the original image data.