[nathanm]

I always take care of my parent's bird Wiley when they're out of town, so this last time I thought I'd try out drphoto's loaner Fuji 210mm lens for some parakeet portraiture.  I used an open shutter in "T" mode and popped a handheld flash for the light source.  It turned out pretty good I think.  There's a sort of 1930's movie star quality to it.  This is a scan but I also did some silver prints.  Didn't do much in Photoshop on this one.  He wasn't too scared of all the commotion and stayed pretty still.  A good thing too, because if he decided to jump to a different perch I'd be hosed.

[jqp]

That's a really nice shot - he wants to know who I am

unfortunately I didn't get this vulture's eyes at the Renaissance Festival

[JohnR]

Shooting a bird with 4x5 (even in a cage) seems like a challenge! That, however, is a budgerigar (isn't it??)

[nathanm]

Yep, budgie\budgerigar\parakeet all essentially the same thing.  It wasn't too hard to shoot because he was tired and shagged out after a long squwak.