Rainbow Lorikeets

[wigz]

The neighbour's umbrella tree is in flower again and attracting birds - unfortunately only these and Noisy Miners, but I have a good vantage point from my kitchen window. I'm pretty limited as I have tendonitis in my right arm and have trouble holding a camera and long lens, so haven't been able to get out for a while.



I've been trying to get one in flight but they are too quick for me and the TC seems to give some focusing problems. This is the closest I've got so far. I might try with the 1.4 or just the lens on its own.



D800, Sigma 120-300 f/2.8 + 2x TC.

[seaslug]

Not getting the images Alan.

[wigz]

Strange - they are showing on all of my devices here.

[Alan]

No pics here either

[wigz]

Can't understand that one. They show up on my tablet, computer and phone. Perhaps there is a caching problem somewhere. I have deleted and re-inserted the images.

[Isac]

These are just wonderful photos of birds doing bird stuff. Vibrant colours, good framing and sharp as. Great work Alan.

[avkomp]

good job on these. as for tc shots, especially stuff in flight, I dont think the camera focuses as fast. you need a little more acquisition time to pull off flight shots with the tc
and not sure the lorikeets will give you that. the tendonitis is a bummer. sometimes my old arms give out too but the wimberley head I have makes using the 600 effortless.
not sure if you have one or have tried one. makes life way easier for us old blokes

[wigz]

Thanks Isac and Stephen.

Acquiring focus is certainly slower with a TC and the lorikeets don't give you much time. The main problem is the lens/camera will sometimes lose focus, wind down to minimum focus distance and then refuse to refocus unless you manually move the focus closer to the correct distance. Mostly with the 2x on an area with little contrast but it sometimes happens for no apparent reason.

I don't have a Wimberley or any other gimbal head, although I have thought about it from time to time.

[Ironwood]

Lovely shots there Alan, gotta love the colours on the Lorikeets.

My Umbrella trees are in flower too

[HansE]

Such beautiful birds.Pray tell what is a TC?

[wigz]

Hi Hans, its a teleconverter.

[wigz]

Thanks Brad and Hans

[Alan]

Beautifully vivid colours.

3200 ISO has produced a bit of noise in the B/G, but I always think it's better to get get a sharp picture and deal with noise later

[wigz]

Thanks Alan. I tend to go a bit lightly on the noise reduction, trying to retain detail, but I might have been a bit too light on the second image.

[Alan]

You don't have to apply NR to the whole image.

Here I just selected the b/g with the Magnetic Lasso Tool and tidied it up with a mask, contracted the selection a bit, and ran the blur tool over it.

I'm sure there are better, more sophisticated methods.

[wigz]

Thanks for that. I did apply much more NR to the bg; there is very little on the bird. I seem to tolerate a little bit of noise these days; maybe I just don't notice it - my eyes aren't what they used to be.