Nuthatch ready to jump!

[Steve Foss]

I've been so disgusted with the birdlessness in my back yard this winter, when the winters before it was full of birds, that I strapped on the camera, got the squeaker call and decided to see what would come in.

This red-breasted nuthatch is the only one who came to visit.

Canon 30D, Canon 100-400L IS at 400mm, iso320, 1/500 @f8, handheld

[Dbl]

Nice Steve, the glint in his eye he is ready!

[finnbay]

Great shot, Steve. I think a nuthatch is even quicker to catch than a chickadee. I always seem to be one step behind them. You sure got this guy with a good pose!

[MN Shutterbug]

This is postcard perfect. The glint in his eye, really adds to it.

[dukhnt]

Love the colors. What a great photo.

[buzzsaw]

Very nice! Good light, tack sharp and a clean BG.

[mmeyer]

That is a really great image Steve. I really like the BG.

[Jim Almquist]

Very nice shot Steve but if you want to see birds you will have to come to my feeders but the bad part is they are so well trained that they only come out right after I go to work and leave right before I get home

[Steve Foss]

Thanks, everybody.

Jim, that just means I'll get in the blind before you leave and stay after you come home. That way I'll be sure to photograph the avian surge just after you head to work and right before you get home. Then I'll be done shooting just in time for that after-work beer.

[cribbageboy]

Gotta love um. I like the foot position. He looks like a professional model.

[Haack]

Steve, Nice shot, how close were you to Nuthatch?

Thanks, John

[Steve Foss]

John, welcome to HSO/FM. Great to have you here!

I was about 7 feet away from the bird. Pics or not, as a bird-watcher for 35 years I just love being that close to them. Plus, my lens won't focus down closer than 6 feet.

[Haack]

Thanks for the information, I just purchased the 100-400 lens for a XTi. I spent most of Sunday trying to get a close shot of a Kestrel but didn't get that close. I tried to crop the photo, but Kestrel didn't look sharp.

John

[Steve Foss]

John, it's very tough to get close to wild kestrels. They are wary birds.

The 100-400 has a learning curve. The push-pull zoom takes some getting used to, but I like it a lot. I've been using it as my go-to wildlife/birding lens for four years now.

Two things. Steadying technique is important. The IS can lull a photographer into thinking he doesn't need to keep a good steadying technique, but that's bitten me in the butt a time or two so now I pretend there's no IS at all and I have to steady the lens on my own. A good monopod is very portable and also offers some nice steadying. The two are a deadly combo.

The second thing is the lens sharpens up noticeably if you can shoot it at f8 instead of f5.6. I've marketed nice shots at f5.6 to glossy mags. They were sharp enough for the mags, but I DO notice it's better at f8. The way I generally achieve that is to set iso at 400, run it in Av mode and select f8 and let the shutter speed take care of itself. With good technique, the big majority of lighting conditions will get you a fast enough shutter speed for sharp images.

If the light is really nice I'll bump iso down to 200 or sometimes 100.

Handheld, you'll have to experiment with just how slow a shutter speed you can work with and get sharp shots. It varies from photographer to photographer. I have used the lens on the DRebel, DRebel XT, 10D/20D/30D, 1Ds Mk2, 1D Mk2 and 1D Mk2n, and it has been a champ on all those bodies.

Good luck, and if you have questions about the lens as you go along, start a thread of your own and ask away. A handful of others on this board shoot that 100-400.

Hope that helps.

[Haack]

Steve, thanks again for the information. John

[MARINERMAGNUM]

Super nice! What a colorful little guy!

[finnbay]

John, I'll second what stfcatfish says about learning curve with the 100-400. I've had mine a couple of months now, and am just starting to get some photos I like. Keep practicing - you'll get there!

[JayinMN]

I'll third that learning curve. I have had mine for a couple months now too and am finally starting to feel a bit more comfortable with it and nowing what I can do with it.

OK, I do have a question though, don't laugh, since the f -stop on this lens is 4.5-5.6. I though it had to be shot in that range. Have I been missing something all this time? Is that the minimum and I can go larger? I know how rto set the aperture on my camera but thought that since the lens was only 4.5/5.6 it wouldn't make a difference if I set it outside of those two stops....

[finnbay]

Jay,

You will not be able to open it wider than 4.5 but you can close it down all the way to 32, with all the stops along the way. Most lenses are not their sharpest at the widest opening, so many people shoot a stop or two down from that- with this lens, 7.1 or 8.0 is what many shoot at. Of course, that slows your shutter speed down. Also, you don't get quite the bokah that you would at 4.5 or 5.6. I don't think I've ever shot a lens at f32, but have at f22 a few times if I wanted everything that the camera could see in focus.

[JayinMN]

Thanks Finnbay.

I feel a little dumb...lol That opens up a whole new world for me. After I posted I grabbed my camera and played around with it I notice quite a bit of difference in the depth of field. I have wanted to increase this in some of the picture I have taken. I'm heading out the door to go play around some more.

[Steve Foss]

Jay, as Ken mentioned, aperture is of course a key in depth of field. Another key, and an important one, is getting the subject as close to the lens as possible and the background as far away as possible.

I shoot from a feeder/perch setup in my back yard, with the perch set up six feet from the lens (just past the lens's minimum focus distance), and shoot at f8 all the time with great buttery background bokeh. That's because the woody backdrop I've got is 30 feet behind the perch.

The closer your subject is to the lens, the shallower the DOF. In other words, just using loose figures, if the subject is 6 feet away at f8, the DOF might be an inch. If it's 200 feet away at f8, the DOF might be a foot or two, and so on and so on, until if you're shooting an environmental portrait quite some distance away, f8 might produce an image with virtually everything appearing in focus.

[mountaindew]

Steve, That is excellent information! Thanks for sharing. Great picture as always! Ya dah man!

[Steve Foss]

Marc, it's also worth noting the the lens' minimum focus distance is not generally measured from the front of the lens, but from either the plane of the camera's sensor or from approximately where the lens' aperture blades are, depending on the company and other factors. Some manufacturers do calculate MFD based on the front lens element, too. Go figure.

Thing to do is to measure the MFD yourself because of those discrepancies in calculating MFD. When I set up from a blind to photograph a close perch, I focus the lens at its closest, move in close and start backing the lens until the perch goes into focus. Then I move back a couple more inches just to be sure and am set to go.

[mountaindew]

Thanks again! That is very good information. I didn't know that! Great thing I came to this forums! Only thing is that I didn't know there was a photos posting boards here.. Now that I know..you'll see alot more of me!

[buzzsaw]

 Originally Posted By: stfcatfish

John, welcome to HSO/FM. Great to have you here!

I was about 7 feet away from the bird. Pics or not, as a bird-watcher for 35 years I just love being that close to them. Plus, my lens won't focus down closer than 6 feet.

Unless you put on your Kenko extension tubes.