Robin at birdbath - composition + anything else?

[STB]

Whew! I was afraid you were going to say that this was better. Yes, I agree, very cramped. I will try to remember negative space when doing PP.

Thanks so so much for all the help. I'm trying to use the viewfinder now to see if that helps with some of my focus issues.

[KurtM]

Make no mistake about it, I live and die by the tripod. For all of my my adult(?) life I've been into photography, astronomy, and birding (along with about a million other hobbies). Astronomy is nothing but one tripod after another, and birding ain't far behind. I actually use 'em far less in photography....

There are two ways to look at tripods: go lightweight, or go quick-release. Of course, just about all tripods have the quick-release feature any more. It consists of a fitting you screw into your camera's tripod hole, and it locks/unlocks to the tripod head with the flick of a lever. But you still have to futz with the legs, and there are two ways to look at that: fewer leg sections mean less futz but longer folded-up tripod, or more leg sections that increase futz factor but yield a very compact folded-up tripod.

I probably have thirty tripods accumulated over the years, and prefer cheap, lightweight, 3-section-leg jobs with flippy clamps that I don't mind losing since they inevitably get left behind, run over, lent out, or heaven-knows-what.

I have a couple of enormou$ly $olid tripod$ that are NOT good for field work. They are lovely things for studio type stuff. If you can only have one tripod, make it a lightweight one, and you'll find it far more versatile. And cheap ones do very nicely with today's lightweight cameras.

[Michael_2010]

Are we talking 100 keepers a day? That would be impressive. I can fire off 100 shots in a couple of hours and maybe get one or two keepers out of the bunch. Thank God for digital media. Film would have me in the poor house. lol

[STB]

Originally Posted by Michael_2010

Are we talking 100 keepers a day? That would be impressive. I can fire off 100 shots in a couple of hours and maybe get one or two keepers out of the bunch. Thank God for digital media. Film would have me in the poor house. lol

Egads, Michael. No way for me to hit 100 keepers a day. I am brand-new to all of this so I am just trying to get myself to shoot at least 100 pics a day, play around with settings, try to understand the way things work then see what I have. Sometimes there's a keeper in the bunch but at this learning stage, I'm tossing a lot. And yes, I'm thankful for digital too! Makes it easier to just play around and less pressure for learning.

[Michael_2010]

I hear ya. That's the best way to learn. Back during the holidays I was visiting my mom and her husband. While I was sitting out on their deck, this little butterfly landed next to me. I started shooting and following that thing from one plant to the next. All of a sudden my camera said "Card is Full." In less than an hour I had taken almost 300 shots of that butterfly. lol

I'm even worse with birds and high speed continuous shooting. One push of the shutter button and bam, bam, bam, bam...........