Critique (1 Viewer)

All of these pictures were taken with a Fuji S8200 Superzoom. Most are included in my gallery, but I'm just looking for how to do better. Saturation, light and contrast were edited minimally in photoshop, and all are cropped (perhaps too heavily?). I have the EXIF for each photo listed below.

#1 (Brown Thrasher)- 1/450 f/6.5 ISO 400
#2 (Lapland Longspur)- 1/350 f/6.5 ISO 200
#3 (Pectoral Sandpiper)- 1/340 f/6.5 ISO 200
#4 (Ruby-Throated Hummingbird)- 1/125 f/6.5 ISO 400
#5 (Ruffed Grouse)- 1/550 f/6.5 ISO 200
#6 (Sanderling)- 1/450 f/6.5 ISO 200

Thanks

And here's #6

Hi Rapala,

They all look like they are cropped heavily. Cropping heavily requires really exceptional technique. What equiv. focal length were you using. There is some motion blur in the hummingbird. Ideally one should keep the shutter speed at least 1/f(35mm equiv). I generally go more than that to ensure sharp shots even when the subject twitches slightly.

I like the pose of the thrasher, grouse and sanderling. The sanderling composition with the colorful rocks is especially nice. The lapland longspur and the pectoral sandpiper are facing away from you which isn't ideal.

I'd also be a little careful with the exposure. In shot six, the white on the sanderlings face has burned out. Once the sensor maxes out, all the detail in that area is lost.

I think that the exposure time was too long in for all of them. Probably you used a equivalent focal length around 1000 mm, so a proper shutter speed would be around 1/1000 seconds or so...

Thank you both;
I did wonder if they were cropped too heavily, as they were originally cropped to print on notecards so that the bird was large in the picture and easy to see. I think I am lucky as it is to have gotten the shot of the Longspur, as it was continually dodging into cover. I posted #3 because I particularly liked the lighting on the left side of the bird. I will keep shutter speed in mind, however.

A bit of a hobby horse of mine I'm afraid but the 'law' of shutter speed needs to be reciprocal of focal length was suggested way before digital sensors. If it was ever meaningful it now needs to be modified to included sensor size: i.e. Multiply by 35mm equivalent 'crop factor' and then multiply again by post production cropping of the image. This gives gives incredibly short shutter times and therefore large apertures / ISOs. Can we ever hand hold these cameras at full zoom?

Hi Rapala,

What you describe here, is my problem too.
10 days ago I purchased the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ200, this is also a superzoom bridgecamera, max optical zoom 24x and widest aperture over the whole focal range f/2.8.
The f/2.8 is really amazing, in low light conditions this is a real improvement wrt the other camera I own, the Sony DSC-HX300.
The Sony has in the focal range of 40-50x optical zoom a widest aperture of f/6.3, about the same as the Fujifilm S8200.
In low light conditions I have to use then a shutterspeed of 1/500-1/640 (for still images) and ISO 1600-3200, which yields very much noise.
In these conditions I sometimes use the Panasonic, but, the focal range of this camera is limited; of course I can use the digital zoom, I try to use a max of 1.5x the optical zoom for this, so then I have a zoomfactor 1.5x24=36x.
Very often this zoomfactor is not enough for birdphotography, the only thing you can do then is heavily cropping and postprocessing of the image.
This is the drawback of the small sensor, on the other hand the small sensor enables the very large zoomfactor, which is really amazing!
In the postprocessing of the image I try to make the crop not smaller than 30% of the original bitmap.

Kind regards,
Kees

Thank you Kees
I agree, the max aperture on the S8200 is a bit frustrating (f/2.8 on the Panny must be nice!). Most of the shots weren't shot in Manual (which I would rather), because the S8200 doesn't really have a full time manual setting. I can change some of the settings, but the camera automatically overrides them when it finds it necessary. For example, in manual I'll try to set the aperture, but the camera will only allow me two apertures, such as f/6.5 and f/16. Not very convenient when I want a moderate aperture of, say, f/8. The metering also isn't very good on the S8200 either. Also as you said, the S8200 has a very small sensor, yielding a large crop factor, which cuts down on IQ. For these reasons I plan to be investing in a DSLR soon.