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It all started yesterday morning with my frustration with hummingbirds.<\/p>\n
I’ve had my hummingbird feeder up for more than two weeks now and they’re being seen in the Salt Lake Valley but I’ve yet to see one at my feeder. I hoped I might have just missed seeing the relatively few that show up here this early but I worked in the vegetable garden for most of the day yesterday figuring I’d see at least one.<\/p>\n
Nada, zilch – didn’t happen.<\/p>\n
So late yesterday afternoon when I sat down at my computer to make the final decision for today’s post I looked at some of my older hummingbird photos just to scratch my hummer itch and came across this one.<\/p>\n
But the chain of events didn’t stop there. It was only the beginning. Of the beginning.<\/p>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/black-chinned-hummingbird-1814-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"black-chinned-hummingbird-1814-ron-dudley\\"")
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1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n The photo, taken on Antelope Island on August 18, 2017 as the Black-chinned Hummingbird was feeding on Rocky Mountain Bee Plant (cleome), was one of the first hummer shots I looked at last night. I’d never posted it before, probably because the body of the bird is turned slightly away from me and there’s a flower stem sticking up into its breast. Silly me.<\/p>\n I like it quite a lot but the bird isn’t particularly large in the uncropped frame (this version has been cropped significantly) and I didn’t know how it would hold up to a fairly large crop so I did some pixel-peeping to check it for critical sharpness.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n The bird was tack sharp so I needn’t have worried about significant cropping (cropping only makes softness worse.) This version is cropped to only 10% of the original image (2 MP of the original 20 MP.)<\/p>\n Normally at this point I’d just process the image, post it and be done with it but at this higher magnification I noticed what appeared to be two ants near the end of the bill and I wanted an even closer look at them.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n So I cropped some more, this time to only 5% of the original. Yup, looks like two ants to me – a teeny, tiny one about to crawl onto the hummer’s bill and a larger one further down on the flower.<\/p>\n Every time I cropped more I was impressed by the sharpness and detail that remained.The individual feather barbs on the face are clear and sharp and we can even see individual pollen grains on the bill. Many hundreds of them.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n At this point I realized that if I posted the image readers still didn’t have a clear visual impression of how much I’d cropped so I decided to process a version of the photo that was full frame, uncropped. This is it.<\/p>\n And then I realized I still wasn’t done. Some readers might want to know where in the image my active focus point was when I took the shot. After all, that little detail is largely responsible for the sharpness of the bird.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n That meant processing yet another version of the photo\u00a0 –\u00a0 this time using Canon’s Digital Photo Professional to produce a full frame version showing inactive focus points (black) and my single active focus point (red) when I took the shot.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n So there you have it – five versions of the same image but I hope I’ve made my point. If the subject is truly sharp significant cropping can hold up unusually well.<\/p>\n And I must say, once again I’m impressed by an image taken by my Canon 7D Mark II. If you ask me it’s pretty damn good for a photo of a bird in flight taken with a 20 MP camera and a focusing system that is now 6 years old. Of course my high quality lens was a major player too.<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Notes: <\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For today’s post one thing led to another. And another. And another…<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/black-chinned-hummingbird-1814-cropped-to-10-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"black-chinned-hummingbird-1814-cropped-to-10%-ron-dudley\\"")
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<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/black-chinned-hummingbird-1814-active-focus-point-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"black-chinned-hummingbird-1814-active-focus-point-ron-dudley\\"")
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