GBH on the hunt

[Paul Ricciardi]

Hey guys, did some shooting this morning and didn't really come up with anything spectacular but did get this and a few other decent ones.
Olympus E500
ISO 100
500mm f/4.5 SMC Takumar manual focus @5.6
1/800th

This was a crop of the full frame that originally had a really distracting rock in the left side of the frame. Not sure how I feel about this shot so figured I would put this up.

I like the contrast between the warmth of the light on his head and the blue water behind him but I'm not too sure about the head angle. It also feels a bit soft to me though the focus looks good and I ran it through USM in PS. So, what say you?

[Dieter Schaefer]

Looks soft on my monitor too - tried another round of sharpening. I like the background colors and the ripples in the water - head angle is not good as the bird is looking away from you. Looks to me there are some clone marks (marked in red) and also some sensor dust (circled in blue); not sure what the spot circled in black is - too much in focus to be sensor dust at this aperture.

[Paul Pagano]

Hi Paul, this one's pretty soft and the Heron's looking away. Dieter's sharpening looks a bit oversharped from my seat. Tripod might help this one to be sharper, not sure how easy that manual focus is.

[Ric Grupe]

Herons are soft...yours looks fine.

IMO the heron just needed to be lightened up and brought a little closer by crop from the top and left.

http://rickay.smugmug.com/photos/285472294_D9uBb-O.jpg

[Paul Ricciardi]

Paul, this was shot off of a tripod like all of my bird shots are, that 500mm lens is something like 8 pounds, no way I'm handholding that. My egret stuff isn't soft like this-same camera same lens etc. Not sure what's going on.

Dieter, yeah there is some sensor dust on the camera, I'm probably going to have it cleaned soon but I really cannot afford to spend any money at all on anything beyond what is necessary. The red marks are not clone marks, those are ripples in the water from where two fish jumped a few seconds apart from each other.

Ric, I like what you've done with it, thanks!

[Sid Garige]

Paul,

I see lot of empty space in the image. cropping it tighter might give more attention to bird.