I had a good hour on the back porch hunting the little feathers - or so I thought. Everything that should be green in my back yard is just starting to bud, and it's all quite dark and brown and kinda yucky. This makes the overall scene dark, which fools my meter and me, so I threw on the Better Beamer.
Fill flash just does not work well with dark backgrounds since this turns the "fill flash" into primary lighting and makes the flash far too obvious. I'm going to have to work on things - like getting a better vantage point to get bright backgrounds or shoot at ISO 800 and drop the flash.
I actually did get some very good shots of some little feathers, but not good shots of the entire scene because of my lack of picking good backgrounds. Live and learn.
Anyway, here's the one good shot of the day, enough to make the day very worthwhile. A Chipping Sparrow:
This is one shot that got away, and I'm crying over. It's not so bad on a web-sized shot, but I managed to focus on his back and his head is too soft. I love these little birds and I've yet to get a perfect shot of one. This shot was too close, and I messed it up.
A Tufted Titmouse:
(Please believe me when I say that his head is too soft. Just compare his head to his tail. At f/5.6 there's very little DoF at this distance.)
