My best picture of a woodpecker ever...while watching owls

The pictures of the owls, the woodpecker below, and a few other images I have yet to post were all taken with my Sigma lens 60-600mm, which I often refer to as my 'big birding' lens. The camera and lens were also mounted on my tripod; something which I'd probably prefer to do all the time but hauling all this heavy gear is problematic for me. You will always get your sharpest pictures using a tripod, ALWAYS. The tripod eliminates noise (blur) caused by motion when you are hand-holding a camera/lens. The bigger the lens, the harder it is to hold the setup absolutely still. If the picture is blurry there are a few likely factors that caused the blurriness. The subject moved, you moved or the camera moved. Movement can sometimes be resolved by having built in stabilization in your camera or lens and/or  having your shutter speed set to a fast speed. With the advent of high quality cameras in phones, a lot of these concerns are taken care of automatically by software built into the phone. 

While watching the owls not really doing anything (normal), a beautiful woodpecker landed on a branch right in front of me. It was about 10 yards away and immediately started hammering the branch, all the while paying no attention to me. I moved the camera and setup on the little guy, snapping pictures as fast as I could. Earlier in the day I had changed the settings in the camera to a slow shutter speed as I wasn't anticipating taking pictures of anything moving fast. There usually isn't time to make many adjustments in camera when shooting birds; either you have the right settings or you don't. Much to my surprise, the slower shutter speed worked. Using phography software, most photographers would remove little branch pointing right at the woodpecker as seen in the top photo. The bottom photo is the same picture, but with the small branch removed. 




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