It's photo time! *Possible 56K warning.*

I found a nice little State Park that's within about 15 minutes of my home, and I made a couple of trips out there. It's a damn nice place for taking pictures, it just sort of sucks that admission is $4 per visit. I ought to check and see if they offer a yearly pass or something. Anyway, I managed to finally get two solid pictures that I really think are worthy of enlarging into big prints. Possibly more, but I haven't looked over all of the files very closely, these are just the two that really seemed to "have it". I want you guys to take a look at them and tell me what you think. I've also included two other pictures, which I think are pretty much crap. But I'm going to show them to you also, for a reason. A brief description will follow each picture explaining why I like them and why I don't like them. I'd appreciate any comments on whether or not you agree with my criticisms, as well as any additional comments you feel to add. The two good pictures first, the two bad pictures last.

Now, this one I really liked. I think that compositionally, this one is actually pretty strong. There's plenty of stuff going on in the foreground, middle ground, and background, without anything looking too "busy". This was taken with an infrared camera, and I think that this is the kind of shot that totally wouldn't have worked any other time of the year. If you notice, the bushes are dead. Since infrared tends to make live foliage extremely bright white, I think that the bushes would not have stood out well enough against the bright sand if this picture were taken in summer or something. I think that the contrast in the upper half of the image is quite nice, with a pretty big tonal range, while still not having many garish and unsightly solid-blacks or blown-out whites. I'm not quite as satisfied with the lower half. The pile of sticks does have too much contrast, and has detail-free blacks as well as detail-free whites. But I think I could potentially nudge more detail out of that part of the image with further knowledge of post-processing. I'm not sure how well this image will blow up as a print, but right now I think it's worth a small print. And the RAW file is definitely a keeper. I might be able to get a LOT more out of this picture with further editing.

Similar to the last one, but here's another one that I really like. Compositionally, I also think that this one is very strong. It utilizes the "rule of thirds" quite well (though possibly not as well as possible. The real subject of the image is a bit too close to center, and I wonder how it would if I had shifted the tower a bit more to the right). But that's nitpicking, I think. As it is, I think that this one looks GOOD. Once again, we get some nice contrast, though not quite as extreme as the last one. And I REALLY like the use of "lines" in this one. The way that the horizon, the walkway, and the clouds all seem to sort of "point" towards the tower, which really makes the whole picture come together. Again, this was shot in infrared. Here we get a bit more of the "infrared effect" resulting from bright foliage. But I think it works here a lot better than it would have worked in the last image, since here the bright foliage sort of contrasts pretty nicely with the dark shadows in the foreground. As a side note, certain lenses are noted for having "hot spots" in the infrared spectrum. This is a very bright area, usually at the center of the frame, which just looks ugly as hell. I did some tests and determined that ALL of my lenses have hot spots which show up at about f/8. Any lens aperature bigger than about f/8, and the hot spot is still there, but isn't that noticeable. At lens apertures smaller than f/8, hot spots can show up and be really ugly. Both this and the previous image were shot at f/11. MOST of my day's infgrared shooting was done at f/11, and I'm lucky that hot spots didn't ruin this or the previous image. Some of the pictures I took were actually ruined by hot spots that resulted from shooting at f/11, so I'm lucky that didn't happen here. At this point, that's sort of a crapshoot. I need to better learn when hot spots will show up and how to avoid them, because I had to throw away a few really nice shots that were ruined by artifacts of shooting in the infrared spectrum using lenses that have "hot spots".

Now we get to the bad pictures. This was taken by a non-modified camera. Standard zoom image from a 10 megapixel DSLR. I post this picture because these are the kinds of things that frustrate the HELL out of me. I saw a LOT of pelicans that day. And this was one of the best shots I got. Problem is that pelicans are BIG birds. Meanwhile, this was shot using a 300 mm lens. But it was a lens designed for a 35mm camera. And I stuck that lens on a camera with a small sensor with a 1.6x crop factor. This makes it actually equivalent to a 480 mm lens. Nearly 500mm, and I was shooting a BIG ****ing bird. I STILL had to crop the **** out of that image in order to give it any kind of impact, and it's still not sharp enough. With a nearly 500mm lens, stabilizing the camera becomes a HUGE problem. Camera shake becomes EXTREMELY magnified at that kind of magnification. So it's that much harder to get a sharp image. Furthermore, I was using an older lens without any kind of image stabilization. Granted, I probably could have made a sharper image using a tripod, but even THAT is a problem. Birds are a pain in the freaking ass to shoot. They sit around doing absolutely nothing. You wait and wait to get a good action shot, and all they do is ****ing sit there. Then you look away for a second, and they are ****ing gone. Try to get close enough to get a good shot, they fly away. set up a tripod, and they're stuck in the frame. And they'll fly OUT of the frame WAY faster than you can loosen the tripod's grip on the camera, recompose the image, and then tighten the tripod's grip on the camera in time to make a good shot. Birds are a pain in the ass, because they simply do not ****ing cooperate with you. Sad thing is that even IF I had managed to get closer to the pelican and get a closer and sharper image, the image would STILL have been pretty boring due to the pelican merely being set against the freaking water. Who knows HOW long I would have had to sit there and wait until I got a shot of a pelican doing something interesting, with an interesting background and foreground, while me still being able to get close enough to get a goodsharp image that doesn't have to be cropped too much. Birds are a ****ing pain in the ass.

And to take that further, here's an even more disappointing image. Potentially NICE action picture of a bird. Decent composition, with a nice mix of things going on. we've got the egret in the middle ground, the reflection in the foreground, and some actual stuff going on in the background, which gives the whole image a certain setting. But once again, I had to crop the **** out of this image, and it's not nearly as sharp as it needs to be. Furthermore, the camera's automatic light meter ****ed the picture up. Almost the entire bird's back is solid white. That's clipped highlights. The entire back is at maximum luminance values, and no amount of editing will ever get any detail back from the bird's back. The detail simply IS NOT THERE. There's just pure white, and all I can ever hope to do is turn the bird's back from pure white to pure gray. And that's the kind of **** that is infuriating. Because this COULD have been a pretty cool shot. If I adjusted the exposure manually, I think I could have kept the bird's ENTIRE BACK from becoming one huge clipped highlight. But it's a freaking bird in a split-second action shot. You don't have time to look at the image, compensate for exposre, change the camera settings, then take thew picture. By that time, the shot is lost forever. Furthermore, I probably could have gotten a better image by paying more attention to the light and REALIZING IN ADVANCE that the bird's back would be pure featureless white. But this bird just came out of nowhere. Once again, it was ewither get THIS shot, or get nothing. Granted, I also could have reduced the contrast on my camera, in order to avoid any clipped highlights. But once again, doing that would have required changing the camera's SETTINGS, which takes TIME, which means that the shot would have been over and done with if I had done anything differently. THIS is why birds are hard as hell to photograph, and why it's so difficult to get good shots of birds. They are total ****ing bastards. They are small moving targets. It's often hard enough getting them in the frame. But even if you DO get them in the frame, it's hard as hell getting everything else just right. And if you **** up on ANY aspect of the photograph, you do NOT get a second chance. I think that this COULD have been a good fgreaking bird photograph. But it's NOT, and it's frustrating as HELL to realize just WHY the picture sucks.

Because I have nothing better to do (besides studying, of course, but I'm taking a break), I am going to post some of my favorite pictures that I took during the summer of '07 while in Switzerland and France.

NOTE: while there is a scroll bar at the bottom of this post, it is largely unnecessary.

I really like the sense of order conveyed by this picture via the perfectly lined rows of grape vines, as well as the contrast between the old and the new with ye oldenne walles at the edge of the lower vineyard and the distant telephone polls.

The Eiffel tower from directly beneath, with the picture taken at a perfect angle to the middle (I set the camera on the ground at the point they specified as the very center).

All I can say is that I like the clouds.

I like the first one the most; the sky has a very foreboding look to it. I like the how the birds are positioned in the last two, but the rest just doesn't fit.PowerSerj

Yeah, I absolutely hate the bejeezus out of birds. Even getting a clear shot of them DOING ANYTHING is hard enough. Either you sit around waiting for them to do something, and they don't do ****, or you notice them doing something and then they're gone before you even have a chance to blink. Or you actually DO manage to capture them DOING SOMETHING, and that's pretty much all you get, with none of the rest of the image coming together. The alternative being that you can anticipate in advance what kinds of birds you're likely to see, and how to compose the image to get a good shot of birds. Then you spend all day waiting for birds to show up THERE, and you don't get one ****ing shot. Shoot them when you see them, all you get are bad pictures. Think about the overall scene in advance and wait for the birds to show up, and you likely won't get ANY pictures. Birds are total ****ing bastards.

[QUOTE="PowerSerj"]I like the first one the most; the sky has a very foreboding look to it. I like the how the birds are positioned in the last two, but the rest just doesn't fit.MrGeezer

Yeah, I absolutely hate the bejeezus out of birds. Even getting a clear shot of them DOING ANYTHING is hard enough. Either you sit around waiting for them to do something, and they don't do ****, or you notice them doing something and then they're gone before you even have a chance to blink. Or you actually DO manage to capture them DOING SOMETHING, and that's pretty much all you get, with none of the rest of the image coming together. The alternative being that you can anticipate in advance what kinds of birds you're likely to see, and how to compose the image to get a good shot of birds. Then you spend all day waiting for birds to show up THERE, and you don't get one ****ing shot. Shoot them when you see them, all you get are bad pictures. Think about the overall scene in advance and wait for the birds to show up, and you likely won't get ANY pictures. Birds are total ****ing bastards.

That rant must have been very pleasing to type out :P 9/10

I can't be critical of stuff like that. Excellent work. :)vgm007

Thanks, but PLEASE be critical. PLEASE point out ANYTHING that you don't like, because that's the kind of stuff that'll help me to get better. I like CERTAIN THNGS about ALL of those pictures, but "what I like" doesn't necessarily translate to "good". Right now, I think the best thing I can do is recognize WHY certain shots are good and WHY certain shots are bad. That's actually why I tried to post a brief description after each picture, to say what I thought was good, and what I thought was bad. THAT is helpful, and results in growth. Take a picture randomly, and you may by chance get a good image. But if it was pure LUCK, and not a deliberate attempt, then that doesn't help you to get any better.

I tried to say what I was aiming for, in order to sort of get across, if only to myself, WHY I think I made those decisions in taking those pictures. In my mind, some aspects worked. However, some aspects also did NOT work, to varying degree. Recognizing what DID work and what DIDN'T work is what helps me to take better pictures in the future. So PLEASE, be critical. See ANYTHING that you don't like, let me know. And let me know WHY that aspect of a particular image did not work.

I also posted brief descriptions for the sake of ease. Rather than having everyone say that a particular image looks nice, or that a particular image looks bad, I think it's better to to explain WHY I like certain parts of certain images up front. That way, we don't have to repeat those criticisms over and over again. Agree with aspects that I thought worked? Agree with aspects that I did NOT think worked? This post is actually more about my processes, rather than the quality of the pictures. I'm actually FAR more interested in hearing whether or not people AGREE with MY self-critiques, or whether or not people disagree with my critiques, and think that I am judging my OWN pictures from the wrong angle. And in that aspect, the first two pictures are the PRIMARY topic. Though the last two pictures are relevant two. Even though the last two pictures clearly suck in my opinion, there are things that I DO like about them. So even with the crappy pictures, I WOULD appreciate knowing whether or not you agree with MY interpretation of what was good and what was bad, or whether or not you completely disagree with my own self-critique.

Again, criticism is what helps people to get better. If you disagree with my interpretation of what went right, please say so. If you disagree with my interpretation of what went wrong, please say so.

Personally, out of the first two, I think that I definitely like the wide shot the best. I think that BOTH have a fairly strong composition. But I think that the second picture has a lot more to it compositionally. The first picture is more pleasing to me as far as its CONTRAST goes, and its use of whites set against blacks (particularly in the top half, where the contrast seems to work quite well). But the bottome half is just TOO "contrasty", with too much pure white and pure black. And while that's not utter death for the image in the same way that my bird shots suffered utter death due to lack of sharpness and poor composition, it still hurts a LOT.

Meanwhile, the second picture has a stronger composition. Everything seems to come together a LOT better as far as composition is concerned. Furthermore, it does have some nice contrast, but not quite the same tonal range and immediate contrasty "pop" of the first image. The first image I think seems more to really jumpo out at me, which I like. But while the second image doesn't quite seem to have the "pop" of the first image, I think that the second picture really does come together a whole lot better. It doesn't JUMP at me like the first picture does, but it still seems to have a nice "look-at-me" factor while still standing up better to further scrutiny. Meanwhile, the first image seems to "jump out at me" more, but that's where the image sort of falls apart, since the "WOW" factor contributes more to careful scrutiny, which makes the bad parts stand out more. The second picture is a bit more subtle as far as its use of light and dark, it it still has some level of "wow", and looks a whole lot better both compositionally and tonally upon further inspection. But I think that BOTH of the first two pictures are worthy of buying prints, for myself, even though the first is more flawed.

To the Pwninator, I like all three of those pictures. My favorite is the second, with the Eifel Tower. Even though everything is centered in the frame, and there are large patches of pure white and pure black, I think that the picture works anyway (there are "rules" on how to do things, but it's important to know when to break those "rules". The second picture seems like more of a geometrical study, and in that sense the symmetry and stark contrasts of elements of the picture work REALLY well, in my opinion.

As far as the first and third picture, I REALLY like the composition. But the lighting seems to be sort of flat. This sort of works in the third picture, where it looks like a foggy day, and the sort of darkness in the picture sort of contributes to the overall feeling. I think that works less in the first picture. Just sort of looks too overall dark. The light's aren't light enough, and the foreground just looks too uniformly dark. Not sure how to fix this. Exposing the foreground more would've made the sky too white. And underexposing the sky would have made the foreground too uniformly dark. Maybe you can get better results by messing with this in photoshop, but I suspect that the only way to really "fix" the first picture would be to just take a picture of the same scene in different light. I REALLY like the composition, but the lighting just doesn't seem to work IMO.

Here are a couple of cool snapshots I took whilst in Thailand.


Anyone seen the movie "The Beach" with Leonardo DiCaprio? This is that beach. It was amazing. Look at the colour of that water- I know I wont see anything quite like it again


Those cliff faces were amazing. On some of them there were houses- yep, people living there. No joke.dylanmcc

:o wow those pics are amazing! the beach is a great movie... did you have to swim to the island like leo to get thar?:P

Hmm...I'd say the first picture is a bit to crowded with the bottom portion. I'd actually get rid of that part completely. But I'm not photography expert, so take that with a grain of salt.

But millions of times better than anything I could do.

Oh and I love how certain parts of the black and white ones look almost drawn or something. Really amazing and wymsical

I like the 2nd one the best. It almost seems surreal. I can't get over the shadows it casts and the contrasts. Lovely. I like the 3rd one too (the bird). You're right about the rule of thirds and how it would be better if it was farther. But you captured it nicely mid movement. Sajedene

Definitely like the first two. The second one the most. I've been having problems with a standard digital camera. At a number of the football games I've been trying to grab some decent pictures of the teams on the field shortly before the ball is snapped, unfortunately it's extremely hit or miss, the picture sometimes comes out perfect, but other times they are just a massive blur. I've tried to minimize the shake of the camera, but to some extent it will always be shaking. (People take these football games very seriously, especially being ranked in the top 25 for most of the past 10 years, crowd noise and the stadium shaking are common place.) However it doesn't seem to explain the blurriness of the photographs. It seems my camera isn't always able to get everything into focus and just blurs it out.

Examples:

This one seems to be fine, nice and crisp, but the one below is blurred, nothing has changed and the camera is as steady as the previous shot.

Here are a couple of cool snapshots I took whilst in Thailand.


Anyone seen the movie "The Beach" with Leonardo DiCaprio? This is that beach. It was amazing. Look at the colour of that water- I know I wont see anything quite like it again


Those cliff faces were amazing. On some of them there were houses- yep, people living there. No joke.dylanmcc

:shock: What's that area called? I wanna go there!

Back to the birds, I'm starting to think that god created birds just to piss me off. This time, I went to the beach today. It was an overcast low-contrast day. I was hoping to see some thunderstorm clouds rolling in from over the water, but no such luck. Pretty much all I got was thin uniform cloud layer over the entire sky that made everything look sort of ugly and flat.

The ONE good thing going on was that a bird just happened to land right ****ing next to me. I've talked about how even a 480 mm equivalent lens often doesn't get close enough to the birds. But here, I only had my 135 mm zoom lens with me. The bird landed about 15 feet away from me, and stood there. At 135 mm, it was CLOSE, and filled up a big portion of the frame. This is the OPPOSITE of what usually happens when I see birds. These birds were apparently so accustomed to being near people, that they essentially landed RIGHT ****ing next to me.

And I STILL couldn't get a good shot. The bird just ****ing STOOD THERE, RIGHT NEXT TO ME, and casually started picking dead **** off of the beach. So I started walking towards it, in the hopes that that would scare it into flying away, which would give me a good close picture of a bird in flight. No such luck. I started walking towards it, but the bird didn't fly away. It just saw me walking towards it, and started to walk away from me. Which left me with a close and sharpo shot of a standing bird's ass.

Hell, then I started RUNNING. I started jogging at the bird, and it STILL wouldn't fly away. That just made it walk away FASTER. I was FINALLY able to make the bird take flight, by going into full-on sprint mode, right towards the bird. But since I was SPRINTING, I lost control of my CAMERA and ended up with a bunch of image blur. Also, By the time I actually got the bird to take flight, I had gotton so close to it that its spread wings DIDN'T FIT IN THE FRAME.

And this wasn't even a BIG bird, like a pelican. It was a normal seagull, shot with a 135 mm lens. And this time, it was TOO close.\

Granted, I can't blame it all on the bird. But still, this kind of **** pisses me off.

In my experience if you're going to shoot wildlife at a distance, carry a massive lens that requires a sherpa, or go home. Not owing one of those lenses I do the go home part, or shoot something else.duxup

I don't quite agree with that philosophy. I see where you're coming from, but good tools are no substitute for proper technique. Hell, even professional wildlife photographers need a LOT of patience, often have to wait a LONG time for ggood shots, and often get an extremely high percentage of garbage shots. Though admittedly, their garbage shots are probably better than any of me keepers, but the point still stands. Good tools do not make up for poor technique. And even with the best tools available, you often have to really know what you're doing and put in some serious time and patience in order to get that magic shot.

And really, a 300mm lens on an small sensor DSLR is a pretty big amount of zoom. That's equivalent to almost a 500mm lens on a 35 mm camera. And that's not super long, but that should be enough. Part of photography IS knowing the limitations of your tools, and adjusting your pictures to compensate for the limitations of the tools. For example, I'm not in the african jungle shooting some never-before-seen species of bird. I'm within city limit photographing pelicans, egrets, seagulls, and herons. This is within city limits. Most of these birds are at least used to seeing cars, many of them are used to seeing pedestrians, and several of them have probably lived here or visited here for YEARS, and had close contact with people over that period of time. A nearly 500 mm zoom telephot lens OUGHT to be more than enough in THESE cases. Bad pictures mean bad technique. Now, if I were in the remote jungle, and I couldn't photograph a bird that no one has ever photographed, then I might be able to blame my equipment. But that's not what I'm shooting, and bad technique and lack of patience are probably the biggest culprits here. Professional photographers shoot a LOT, they often have to wait a long-ass time to get a POTENTIALLY good shot, and even a lot of the potentially good shots often turn out to be crap. But they deal with it because they are good enough to get paid to do this **** for a living. I am NOT that good, I will never be that good, and it's all lack of technique and patience.

Still, I'm just saying that birds are frustrating as hell. They do not cooperate with you. Still life scenes are EASY. But birds are a whole other ballgame, ESPECIALLY if you're lacking in technique and patience. Same thing with sports photography, or any kind of action photography for that matter. Composing good still life images is FAR more easy than ANY kind of images that require good composition AND the ability to do that **** on the fly. Switching from still-life to action is MUCH more difficult, has a much higher learning curve, and often results in crappy images. Proffesional sports photographers don't take a handful of pictures, all of them being great, and then go home to bathe in a bathtub full of sexy women. They shoot a HELL of a lot at each event, and almost all of that ends up going into the garbage. And those are the select few who are good enough to actually make money doing this stuff.

[QUOTE="duxup"]In my experience if you're going to shoot wildlife at a distance, carry a massive lens that requires a sherpa, or go home. Not owing one of those lenses I do the go home part, or shoot something else.MrGeezer

I don't quite agree with that philosophy. I see where you're coming from, but good tools are no substitute for proper technique. Hell, even professional wildlife photographers need a LOT of patience, often have to wait a LONG time for ggood shots, and often get an extremely high percentage of garbage shots. Though admittedly, their garbage shots are probably better than any of me keepers, but the point still stands. Good tools do not make up for poor technique. And even with the best tools available, you often have to really know what you're doing and put in some serious time and patience in order to get that magic shot.

And really, a 300mm lens on an small sensor DSLR is a pretty big amount of zoom. That's equivalent to almost a 500mm lens on a 35 mm camera. And that's not super long, but that should be enough. Part of photography IS knowing the limitations of your tools, and adjusting your pictures to compensate for the limitations of the tools. For example, I'm not in the african jungle shooting some never-before-seen species of bird. I'm within city limit photographing pelicans, egrets, seagulls, and herons. This is within city limits. Most of these birds are at least used to seeing cars, many of them are used to seeing pedestrians, and several of them have probably lived here or visited here for YEARS, and had close contact with people over that period of time. A nearly 500 mm zoom telephot lens OUGHT to be more than enough in THESE cases. Bad pictures mean bad technique. Now, if I were in the remote jungle, and I couldn't photograph a bird that no one has ever photographed, then I might be able to blame my equipment. But that's not what I'm shooting, and bad technique and lack of patience are probably the biggest culprits here. Professional photographers shoot a LOT, they often have to wait a long-ass time to get a POTENTIALLY good shot, and even a lot of the potentially good shots often turn out to be crap. But they deal with it because they are good enough to get paid to do this **** for a living. I am NOT that good, I will never be that good, and it's all lack of technique and patience.

Still, I'm just saying that birds are frustrating as hell. They do not cooperate with you. Still life scenes are EASY. But birds are a whole other ballgame, ESPECIALLY if you're lacking in technique and patience. Same thing with sports photography, or any kind of action photography for that matter. Composing good still life images is FAR more easy than ANY kind of images that require good composition AND the ability to do that **** on the fly. Switching from still-life to action is MUCH more difficult, has a much higher learning curve, and often results in crappy images. Proffesional sports photographers don't take a handful of pictures, all of them being great, and then go home to bathe in a bathtub full of sexy women. They shoot a HELL of a lot at each event, and almost all of that ends up going into the garbage. And those are the select few who are good enough to actually make money doing this stuff.

Otherwise there's plenty of good quality glass out there for good prices.

Definitely like the first two. The second one the most. I've been having problems with a standard digital camera. At a number of the football games I've been trying to grab some decent pictures of the teams on the field shortly before the ball is snapped, unfortunately it's extremely hit or miss, the picture sometimes comes out perfect, but other times they are just a massive blur. I've tried to minimize the shake of the camera, but to some extent it will always be shaking. (People take these football games very seriously, especially being ranked in the top 25 for most of the past 10 years, crowd noise and the stadium shaking are common place.) However it doesn't seem to explain the blurriness of the photographs. It seems my camera isn't always able to get everything into focus and just blurs it out.

hokies1313

What kind of camera do you have?

One thing I can say is that if SOME of your pictures come out sharp enough, then the camera isn't the problem. If NO pictures ever come out sharp, then there might be a problem with the camera. Some kind of unproperly aligned focus calibration or something. But if you get good shots SOMETIMES, then the problem is not your camera.

What you have to do is narrow down the culprits. What did you do when the pictures turned out well? What did you do DIFFERENTLY when the pictures turned out BADLY? I don't know. But the camera is merely a machine. If it takes good pictures sometimes, and bad pictures other times, the key is to narrow down what YOU did differently. The fact that the pictures SOMETIMES come out okay is proof that the camera is doing its job. You need to narrow down any changes that YOU made. Different lens? Improper use of the camera's autofocus? Different camera settings? I don't know. But I guarantee that the problem here is user error. The fun part is playing detective and figuring out WHAT you did wrong when your images looked crappy.

Both are natural cave formations. The first one is something this cave was known for. It has more of those little spirals than anywhere else, the second one is a little dark, but it's called caramel falls.

The user is always a big part of it but shooting at long distance and sharpness and accurate focusing at such a distance is always going to be an issue and frankly there's not many options (other than get close) to address it consistently other than some of the big fancy lenses. It is one of the few cases where I think those bit expensive lenses are really necessary if you're going to do that kind of work much.

Otherwise there's plenty of good quality glass out there for good prices.

duxup

See my previous post, where some of my shots were actually ruined today because I got TOO CLOSE to birds. And that was with a lens with a minimum length of 28 mm.

It's bad technique, plain and simple. It's nearly ALWAYS bad technique.

Granted, I'm still pissed off at the bird for not making things easier for me. But this was one of the best case scenarios. It was a BIRD, and I managed to get so close that it wouldn't even fit in the frame with its wings spread. And this was with a fairly wide angle 28mm lens. No excuses.

Granted, I'm sort of pissed off at the bird for making things hard for me, but this sort of stuff is ENTIRELY user error. And the same thing usually applies in MOST situations. If you're too close, you can't blame your subject for being too close. You're the photographer, it's YOUR job to back the hell up. Too far away? Then get closer. It's hard for you to get closer? Boo hoo. Deal with it. People who are professionals do what they have to in order to get the shot. If it requires waiting all day to get the shot, that's what they do and that's why they get paid to do this. And supposing that you CAN'T take good pictures of a certain subject with your available tools. Well then, choose a different subject. Can't get close enough to migrating geese? Then put a bird feeder in your backyard and wait. Can't get a good picture of a hummingbird? Then visit a freaking chicken farm and take some pretty pictures of domesticated chickens.