Anna's Hummingbird (Male)

i hate it when people are giving you a 3 without saying why!

i think the idea is good here but i cant really focus on the subject. if you use long telephoto lenses use a tripod. it will sharpen and focus a lot better on the subject. right now i think to improve this photo would be to crop it vertical. to much of the branch here unnecessary to look at) and see if you can sharpen just a little to help with the focus. all that i said is from an amateur but i hope it helps.

Mr. Calin I appreciate your comment. The photo was taken with a Nikon 300/2.8 mounted on a D700 body. I also used a 1.4x teleconverter. I estimate that I was about 40 to 50 feet from the bird when I took the photo. The image shown here is a crop of about 1/8 of the total image. Not quite 1:1, but pretty close. The shot was difficult because of backlighting and deep shadows in the area of the bird. I estimate about 8 to 10 stops of dynamic range. The camera was mounted on a Manfroto 475B tripod and 3047 head. Image details are 1/200s, f/2.8, ISO 500, spot metered. Check the birds eye. I suggest focus is dead-on. Focus decreases on the right side of the birds chest and in the lower tail feathers because of depth of field effects. I increased shadows to bring out contrast and saturation, but this also causes some loss of detail. I have similar images (about 5) with different crops. I like this one, because of the diagonal stripe of green in the background. When the bird swiveled its head, the hood and gorget flashed neon yellows and oranges. I liked this shot which shows detail in the hood area. I estimate the bird in the image is about 1.5 times lifesize. I think a rating of 3 is pretty low for this image, but then I am biased. Some like your work, others don't. Oh well.

Doug