The other advice looks good, but just a word on Autofocus, especially for wildlife. I’ve not tried any of the eyeball tracking cameras, but if it’s not that, it is just going to be “Closest distinct object”, unless (ironically) it recognises an eyeball or face and clicks to that. “Closest Object” is fine for portraits, etc. but for poorly lit wildlife with undergrowth around it will really struggle: you will forever be focusing on fascinating sticks and leaves. I’m therefore often switching from Autofocus to “Focus on this point” and hoping hand shake won’t put me off target. Occasionally, even resorting to manual focus.

Eyeballs on wildlife in poor light or in cover are, unsurprisingly, hard for cameras to spot.

It will also struggle in poorer light - relatively distant flying birds against a cloudy sky for instance, can leave my Canon R6 searching wildly for a viable focal distance for anything, for all to my eyes it’s “obvious” there’s only one thing worth focusing on. This is the “distinct object” part.

In some ways, the above problems are due to “proper” cameras having a shorter depth of field (but better quality in that field) compared to smart phones, so getting the focus “good enough” is more of a challenge.

That is all to say, Autofocus is nice when it works, but it won’t always work regardless of camera, so still pay attention to the ease of other focusing modes.

Perhaps a Golden-crowned Kinglet - you could try posting the photo to the !birding community for confirmation (but then you might be exposed to my bird photos).

No, no, I just can’t upvote someone calling me a liar…

If that was taken in the UK, it would be a Firecrest, and would invoke jealousy from the likes of myself.

If taken in the US, some sort of Kinglet, and I know nothing about their rarity there.

You’ve been posting some pleasant photos today, but this one is suffering a bit from depth of field issues on the cone. Having the pine needles in soft focus is fine, but the cone probably ought to be sharp end to end. Perhaps up the aperture (higher F number), shoot from further away and crop, or shoot more from the side.

Yay!

Ah - yes, I still fail to think of mobile phones as capable cameras in certain (wide-ranging) circumstances - like this one! I’d imagine it’s the in-camera composite from the various lens it has.

Nice. What were you using to get such great depth of field?

Not laughing - I had a terrible time when I was first trying to get the mounting plate for the camera off of the body of Manfroto Ball mount, requiring copious amounts of WD40, close watching of videos of how it should have worked, and brute force. It now works pretty well, but was a wierd movement intended to stop accidental releases.

If you have a decent camera shop nearby, they might be prepared to look at it (I’m guessing you bought online)

Otherwise, I’d guess you’ve already tried WD40 anywhere there’s a crack that might be relevant (remembering to wipe it all away before going near a camera), and double checking instruction manuals and youtube for videos of mount in action (just in case there is a “trick”). So, ummm, good luck!

If that’s in the UK, they might be soldier beetles of some kind, but hard to tell from the side and/or closer.

In passing, as a first approximation, (true) bugs suck, while beetles chew and have hard wing cases (which is what these look like having). But there’s plenty of examples to the contrary!

Shield bugs have a wide often colourful “shield” as their back - it’s hard to believe you wouldn’t have noticed!

Ah, there I am making assumptions again!

Still, some sort of histogram tool should be present any anything that pretends to process RAW files, and is often my only post-processing after cropping (admittedly, for bird photography, where I don’t usually want to tamper with colour).

On speed - the real trick on situations that change is to train yourself to take any sort of shot first for the memory, and only then think about framing, angle, best focus technique and all those sorts of things that take time and lead to missing the opportunity all together.

Have you tried what Canon DPP calls Gamma Adjustment, or what I think of as “the Histogram Tool”? Depending on your tools, it should at least have a top (light), middle and bottom (dark) marker that you can slide. The most impactful is the middle one, pushing it towards the top (light) end, can add impact (greater changes in brightness in the middle of the range) and remove a washed out look, whereas going the other way can bring out some milder darker areas without affecting the strong darks and lights. To me, it seems likely the JPG had that midpoint pushed a little towards the top end, so that the JPG feels less washed out than the RAW.

Loosely, Gamma Adjustment allows a more controlled change from just an overall Brightness Control, withe Shadows and Highlights controls somewhere in between.

Less relevant here, but the top marker can be used to bring overblown pixels back into having graduations and throwing away the detail in a boring grey/white sky (opening up a greater range of brightnesses elsewhere), while the bottom marker can throw away the detail in the darkest shadows.

In passing, if your third party tools “start” with your RAW photo displaying differently to the JPG you might benefit from looking at Canon’s own tools. I’m guessing Canon DPP4 still works with your camera’s photos, and if so, it’s both free and remarkably powerful for a free tool - though it’s mostly only about global edits. It also “starts” at what your camera would do before saving as a JPG. You can probably work in DPP, save in TIFF format, and import that TIFF into your third-party tool and not lose any of the information to allow detailed editing, alternative de-noising, balancing and sharpening approaches, etc.

In passing, don’t be too dismissive of your shooting skills - that picture is sharp, interesting subject, and nicely cropped or framed. Not a prize-winner, but worth keeping.