Brown Sugar

Excellent pose and eye contact, Tim. The smaller image looks very sharp, but the larger image looks just a tiny bit soft to me.

Thank you Dennis. I'm kind of glad you said so. It's a fairly deep crop and I may have reached beyond acceptable limits in doing so but I needed to get some garbage out of the way that my cloning skills couldn't handle. When I looked at the larger image I thought it was a bit soft too. But I'm still working on this damned lens replacement surgery recovery and quite frankly, EVERYTHING looks soft to me!

a nice perch, pose, and setting, Tim. I agree with Dennis that the larger version does not look quite sharp, and I think that it also shows more noise than I'd expect from the 5D3 at ISO 400--did you have to crop this a lot? For the comp, I might suggest a horizontal, with less on top and more to the left for the bird to look into.

Tim: A nice image and pose. I see the comments about sharpness on the larger version. Does seem just a tad soft, but not bad. I'm more concerned with the level of noise at ISO 400. I shoot the 5D Mark III as well and I'm guessing the issue was introduced somewhere along the way in post processing. It is especially evident in the green background.

Thank you Keith, and you're right not to blame the camera! I suppose some of what you all are referring to could be from post processing but also I don't think anyone realizes how deep of a crop I made with this, or maybe you do! Might be I should have left this one in the bag and not posted it.

Not familiar with that part of the world so can't confirm this as a thrasher; it might be a wren just as easily.

Pose and perch are fine. I agree about the overall softness in the larger version. I'm a proponent of limited cropping, although some cropping is almost always necessary with wild birds shot in the field. I recommend paying attention to just how much you are cropping (it is very easy to underestimate) and calculate the actual amount as a way understand how much image information you are tossing away. See the Calculating Crop Percentages tab on this page on my web site.

I'd also suggest decreasing the saturation a bit on this.

Richard, thank you very much for that information. Quoted from your link.....
"I feel it is important to disclose how much an image has been cropped if it is posted on a photo critique site where learning and information sharing are primary goals. Disclosing that a posted image is a substantial crop is simply honesty about how close the photographer actually got to the subject; keeping quiet about such a large crop is dishonest and misleads viewers about the photographer's skills and sets up unreasonable expectations for beginning photographers who haven't mastered field techniques on getting close."

I'm sure glad this is a learning site because I'm REALLY learning now! I wasn't trying to be dishonest. I honestly had never thought about this aspect of it. I'm a numbers freak anyway so I understand this and see your points clearly. That being said, I'm not going to tell you how this one calculates because I'm too embarrassed by it Let's just suffice it to say that its huge and I was no where close to that bird!

no need to be embarrassed about anything, Tim! btw, there's a very easy way to calculate crop percentages if you crop your images in Adobe Camera Raw. When you draw the crop box in the image, it will tell you how many megapixels the cropped areas is just below the image--take that number and divide it by the original number of megapixels, and you've got your %.

In the case of this image, it's probably almsot entirely the extreme crop that has led to the issues with both lack of detail/sharpness and noise.

Cute looking thrasher! It looks cool that his feet blend in with the stump. I like all the feather detail, and the nice colors!