Any constructive criticism much appreciated.
Rich
Hi Rich, here is my constructive criticism for what it is worth.
The
Chaffy has some nice detail but the focus looks to be on the tail and not the head - always try to lay the focus point on the head/eye of the bird, if the head is not sharp then the image will rarely look good. A looser crop with more room on the right for the bird to look into would help a lot with the composition.
Apart from being noisy and soft The
Egret shot is overexposed which has resulted in the white being 'blown' - thus no feather detail. With white birds, especially in the sun light, you will need to dial-in some minus exposure compensation to prevent this.
The
Duck pic is the best IMO although it is slightly overexposed on the whites. A looser crop giving more room on the left for the bird to look in to would help the look of the image a lot.
The
Bully shot is both extremely noisy and soft.
As a general rule do not be obsessed with filling the frame with the bird as this rarely makes for a nice image - showing some of the habitat and giving the bird room to look into helps a lot to give a pleasing image. Always placing the bird dead centre in the image rarely works well.
Just because the Camera gives up to 2400mm (digital) reach does not mean that you should always use that. Far better to get near enough to allow you to use just optical focal length if you can, IQ will be a lot better.
Hope this helps