Shooting Feathered Friends

With a camera, of course!
We like watching the birds at the feeder from our kitchen window, it's one of the reasons we got it.  After months of thinking "I've got to get pictures of these guys", I finally acted on it.
First we break out the D2X, the old workhorse and put it on my studio tripod with the Really Right Stuff BH-55 ballhead:

This bad boy got me through my first few years of sports shooting. Unfortunately, it was terrible with low light situations, such as night games and indoor without flash.  Very bad digital noise.  At the time, Nikon had no alternative and all the top sports shooters used Canons, who handled low light very well.  Nikon has since caught up, beginning with the D3 and the D700.  Attach the usb cable:

Zoom, get focus on the feeder, as close to the prong on which they stand. Be careful not to let the distant background throw it off.  Set focus to Manual, turn off VR.  Set shutter and aperture.  I used 1/200 as it was in shade, could have gone faster.  f/5.6, which was as low as I could go on this lens with the zoom all the way out.  Attached the other end to the USB port on the Dell Mini 10, sitting inside the house, just out of sight of our subjects:

Yes, I closed the screen.  Here is the line of sight:

Fire up Nikon Camera Control Pro 2 on the Dell, make sure the settings are the way you want them:

And click the Shoot button when the birdies show up for dinner time.  ViewNX captures the image (bypasses the CF card in the camera, I did not even have one in there):

Here is an image, right out of the camera. I shoot RAW format 100% of the time:

Some selective cropping, sharpening, and some enhancements using Nik Software Color Efex 4.
Here we used Tonal Contrast and Graduated Neutral Density (top down) on our goldfinch friend here to get the effect I like:

Now if only those jays and cardinals would show up!