Blue Jay close up

[DeMorcan]

I know the limitations of my birds photography now. Rob was talking about his 8mp E500 and the 20mp EM5III today. This was a taken with the Olympus UZI in 2001. That was a 2mp point and shoot of the time. This photo is uncropped and a jpeg as the camera had no RAW back then. I walked the same path through a woods every evening on the way home from work. The woods was part of a wildlife preserve. I had some sunflower seeds for the blue jays and some raw meet for a fox and some other things for the animals that posed for me. This day I set on a bench before I got to where the birds usually were. Because he was impatient, this jay flew out in the open and landed on my should while I was setting up the camera. The shot was aperture preferred at the shortest focal length (38 equivalent) at f/2.8 which gave some shallow dof with the 1/2" CCD sensor. The technology is old and outdated and the camera had awful CA so I avoided high contrast shots with it. But even back then Olympus had a good IS system which has only gotten better over the years. I like this photo and the memory of taking a photo of an irritated jay on my shoulder. I do not think I could take that shot today with the better cameras and lenses. I did use PS back then and this was sharpened probably at 1 pixel 80%. I shot freelance for the newspaper in Peoria, IL. They did use this photo in a pullout section they did weekly about area events and places to go. It was only $25 a shot (and a press pass so I could get in places free), but if I could sell then 4 or 5 prints a week in the late 1990s and early 2000s, it helped me get more camera gear (which was still film mostly then). Of course I know an 11 year old camera cannot take a phot as good as a modern cellphone.

[FlyfishnFoto]

Cool photo.
Well done.

[GearHead]

Good story.
Great photo. Thanks for sharing.
My first digital was an Hewlett Packard. I think it was 2.1 mg. Why did I buy a camera from a printer company? It must have been a good price for all those pixels. I don't remember much about it other than it was a lousy camera.

[Richard Francis]

Looks like it's going to tap the lens!

[DeMorcan]

I think he wanted to bite my ear to get my attention as I was ignoring him until I took the photo.

[Lysippus]

Great photo DeMorcan, and a timely reminder that today's 'bells and whistles' shouldn't be allowed to get in the way of taking a great photo.