I photographed this beautiful red-capped cardinal at a bird feeder at the lodge I use for my photo tours in the Pantanal of Brazil. The bird allowed a fairly close approach -- about eight feet. I wanted to fill the frame with the cardinal (this picture is uncropped), but that meant I had to use my 500mm f/4 lens plus a 1.4x teleconverter. The problem with this combination, though, was that I couldn't focus to eight feet. Therefore, I used one extension tube placed between the camera body and the teleconverter, and that gave me the ability to bring the bird into sharp focus. Extension tubes are usually used in macro photography, but they come in handy when using a long lens with a subject close to the camera position. My settings for this were 1/200, f/5.6, 1000 ISO, and I used a tripod. My next photo tour to the Pantanal is November 2-10 later this year.
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