I'm not diplomatic, never have been or never will be.
I let the tone of the conversation be dictated by others and then follow.
I am genuinely learning from the feedback, but conditions dictated the settings I was using. The Oly system is notorious for noise and anything above ISO800 it gets very messy, that is why I always use a max of 800. The Sigma 50-500 is notoriously bad in low light situations.
The artefacts around the bird are from where I have attempted (badly when you do blow up the image) to blur the background to remove some of the noise that was there. I have done this using Corel Paintshop pro x6 by just adjusting the depth of field and merely drawing around the bird and tree stump. That's probably the wrong way of doing it but layers confuse me.
I have also shot in jpeg so is that a contributing factor to the artefacts?
Joe, this is complete and utter jibberish to me, you may has well have written it in Swahili, On a technical level I understand absolutely none of what you have written here. Your knowledge is far superior to mine. (that's not a dig) Your manner in which you share your knowledge however is very patronising and blunt.
Yes, I probably shouldn't have been taking pictures on this particular day in the conditions but its a rare occasion when I do get out and as of yet I have not found the ability to order the right light.
Here are a few other images I consider to be good, I'm genuinely intrigued to now know why they aren't?
Chaffinch Female VP 08.02.2015 by
Tim J Preston, on Flickr
Dunnock VP 08.02.2015 by
Tim J Preston, on Flickr
Greenfinch VP 08.02.2015 by
Tim J Preston, on Flickr
These were taken on a different day but in very similar conditions. Joe, I apologise for the manner in which I have responded and I would genuinely appreciate your thoughts.