Flapping Long Tail

[Nick Palmieri]

Shot this guy at the Barnegat Jetty in New Jersey this weekend. I was aiming to get them in flight but it was not to be this time. 1DMK4, 600, ISO 640, SS 2000, f/8.0..I have a few issues with this one and want to see what others have to say...



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[Satish Ranadive]

Nick:
Beautiful image of beautiful bird. Very nice colors,details,lights and waves in the water.I would like to see some more space infront of bird and Would crop the bottom.
I like the water droplets too.

Regards,
Satish.

[Doug West]

I agree with Satish. You need to add some canvas on the left to push him
more to the right and not so centered.

Doug

[David Salem]

Hi Nick. You mentioned you had a few issues with this image. The one that I notice is the grain in the image predominantly in the wings. Was it a big crop? Otherwise I like the cool pose and the color to this species. Exposure looks good too.

[Karl Egressy]

Beauty pose captured, Nick. I seem to notice some noise especially on the wing tip and on the body to a less degree.

[Daniel Cadieux]

That is a beautiful species, flight or not, and you have it in a very appealing wingflap pose (although the body angle could ahve been a tad more towards us). The IQ has taken a hit from what looks like a big crop...try adding back for a looser comp, especially left and top (and a bit at right). Another thing worth looking at is the big catchlight covering all of the pupil...it would be worth reducing it to improve the eye. You do have an excellent exposure and the image looks properly focused. The water is very nice too.

[Bill Dix]

Very nice wing-flap captured, Nick. Sometimes (in fact, most times, for me) they just don't want to fly close to the jetty. Some good comments above. Noise is evident, in the near wing particularly (large crop?), and a head turn would have been nice. Yes to some room on the left, if you have it.

[Nick Palmieri]

Thanks guys. The noise was one of my issues. it's about a 40% crop and I didn't feel there should be any noise. The exposure was dead on, a few blinkies on the neck..minimal PP, crop, curves, sharpening...Any ideas what else could be causing the noise? low ISO for that camera may try to reprocess.

[Randy Stout]

Nick:

Good input from the crew. What struck me when 1st viewing the image was the noise, quite coarse and noticeable in most darker areas, and the IQ being soft over the entire bird.

I too am surprised about the noise with this camera at that ISO. Normally I would have thought it had been very underexposed and bringing up the exposure in post caused the noise to pop up.

Do you have other frames in this sequence that you could check for noise?

Cheers

Randy

[Chris Davidson]

Nick, everyone has given sound advice here!
Since I have shot recently at this location and have some images up here http://www.flickr.com/photos/63678308@N05/
thought you might like to take a look and view the exif data to see my shooting specs!
Your image so closely resembles some of mine thought they might be of interest!!

All the Best

Chris