dv2004 wrote:
JT,they have noise because they are crops and underexpossed,the only one with a half desent expossure is the last one that you used flass.
For first time and the lens you used though,they are not that bad.
Try to exposse them corectly in the future,check your camera`s histogram.
Yeah, the lighting wasn't that great, even though the sun was shining nearly directly on the feeder, and I still had to do some tweaking with levels in photoshop. I should have known that would cause more noise than usual. At one point I even clamped a work light to my tripod, but that didn't seem to help either. I'm still don't have a Speedlight, so I'm limited to 200 when using the flash. Perhaps a REAL flash (ie: faster) could make a difference in the future. I suppose if I were using a slower shutter speed they would have turned out better, lighting wise, but those damn hb's are QUICK! I was sitting there with my shutter release cable and each time they'd pause to roost for a second, I'd click the button and it seems the exact instance they heard the sound, they'd jump. I had a lot of shots where they were blurred due to the reaction of the shutter sound.
I tried my 50 1.4 to get more light, but then I lost quality in the image. The birds looked a bit more fuzzy. Perhaps if I had tried to focus directly on the bird while it was feeding instead of on the "flower" before the bird arrived, I might have been able to get a clearer shot with that tiny DOF.
Thanks for the comments and I'll try something different next time, as far as the lighting goes.
