Been trying to get some decent pictures of our backyard Goldfinches ever since we started filling the feeder a couple of weeks ago. Never could get a sharp image due to camera shake.
After watching their behavior it dawned on me the, females, at least aren't all that people shy. Knowing they start their evening feed around 4:30 I set up the camera and tripod, on one side of the feeder at the closest focal length, my chair on the other side about 6 feet away with our remote shutter trip in one hand and a beer in the other I patiently waited. Sure enough within a few minutes they came in to feed.
First picture was taken with Sigma 70-200 2.8 at f8 1/500. Not quite the sharpness I wanted but better than I had been getting.
After waking Curtis N from his nap and have him help me with the exposure technical stuff, (my brain just doesn't function that way, yet). On his suggestion I changed lenses to the 50 1.4 set it up with the sun behind the camera, metered in on a grey card and shot at f16 1/80. The last three are samples of what I got.
I'm going to get up before dawn tomorrow and set up again. Hopefully I'll catch a male. They are starting to turn to their winter color so this may be my best chance, this season to get them in full gold plumage.
Thanks for looking:
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