Hummingbird in Mexican sage

JC

Spent the day shooting hummingbirds at the South Coast Botanic Gardens (CA), shot hundreds, got a couple keepers.

Here is one in a classic hummer pose (I like the quirky shots a bit better though).

Question for the forum, how does the white balance look?

This one was shot in jpeg, basically SOOC, white balance 'as shot', although in the ones I shot in RAW, the as shot WB was cooler than the sunlight setting in Corel Aftershot. (Canon 5D II, I haven't really noticed it shooting cool in general). Perfectly clear day, no clouds, pure sunlight.


On my desktop colors look good, on my laptop, they look a little cool (I have noticed my laptop displays cool). I've got some problem running the monitor calibration program in Ubuntu 14.04, (no problems in 13.x), so I haven't calibrated my monitor in quite some time, I need to figure that out, but until I do, how does the white balance on this shot look? I know it's tough with the image so dominated by blue and green. Spot color checker on the white petals gives me a blue bias, but spot color checker on the brightest chest feathers isn't biased to blue.

Stumblebum

Nice shot! Love the comp! Looks fine to me! Probably monitor difference, I would have brightened overall shot, just a bit more.

Seefutlung

I like it.

JC

Ok, if the white balance looks ok, here are a couple of more. C&C appreciated. These are all tight crops from a 400mm lens. I want to print a series (for myself), and I'm gravitating to square crops for these.

2)


3)


4)


5)


6)


7) This last one is me testing my manual focus skills with an old Olympus zuiko 90mm lens.

Stumblebum

#4 is fantastic! Love it!
#3 is perhaps the sharpest and with best light and clarity....however, the wings are borderline clipped, and the branch in bottom left corner can be cloned out. JMO.

Hunter58

Love the first shot! Well done.

bristlecone

Nice set JC. White balance looks good to me, color seems right on the flowers. Also like your idea of a series of square crops, post a group shot when you complete them.
-Len