Ibis landing

[Tobie Schalkwyk]

There's no chance of getting a 'neat' landing from this scrambled bundle of feathers - it's landing is rather quite comical.

BG blur increased a tad, midtones adjusted, sharpened a little. Some long grasses right below bird removed. It has a little piece of fluffy feather on its bill which I left as is.


Nikon D600
Nikon AF-S 300mm f/4 D IF-ED + TC14E II
f/5.6 | 1/2000s | 800 ISO | HH

All C & C's welcome.

[gail bisson]

Just love the light and that great gun metal gray with a hint of mauve BG.
Good IQ and landing pose as well.
I would tidy up your areas where you cloned out the grasses as I can see the slight outlines (I call them ghostings) of them. It also looks like there is a bit of noise in the near wing and would work on that as well.
You will have a fine image with those little tidy-ups,
Gail

[Karl Egressy]

Excellent landing pose, perfect timing.

[Bill Dix]

Wonderfully comic landing captured. And beautiful light. Good comments from Gail. I think the "cloned-out" grasses may be the result of blurring the bg and getting some of the blur effect on some grass stems. Some clean-up will help. I'd personally remove the feather on the bill too, but that's personal preference. It hurts the line of the bill.

[Tobie Schalkwyk]

Thanks for the comments everyone!

Gail you're right I'll do a bit of cleaning up...:S3:

Bill the blurred grasses have not been blurred by me - in fact if one looks closely you can see some remaining noise on them. I puposely did not blur them even more as it resulted in a very two dimensional look of the sand bank.

[Jim Keener]

I love the light on the neck and breast. And the capture at the defining moment. I'm interested in your lens/TC combination, as I'm thinking of trying a similar Canon configuration.

[Tobie Schalkwyk]

I love the light on the neck and breast. And the capture at the defining moment. I'm interested in your lens/TC combination, as I'm thinking of trying a similar Canon configuration.

It appears that the different brands sometimes differ somewhat on the experiences with 'same spec' lenses but as far as the Nikon is concerned (and I say this with caution as I've taken only about 50 pics with it): it's a very nice lens as long as you don't stretch your distance from the subject too much. What I mean by that is that for far away scenes my 70-200mm f2.8 lens gives me better quality pics when zoomed 100% in pp than the 300mm (perhaps justifying their price difference). But the 300mm does have that extra reach & larger FL (specially with the TC14) which is sometimes worth its weight in gold. Obviously it's a non-VR/IS lens so I do 99% of my slower-ss (i.e. non-BIF) shots from a monopod. The Ibis landing was taken accross a dam, probably about 40 metres from me.

[Bill Dix]

Thanks for the comments everyone!

Gail you're right I'll do a bit of cleaning up...:S3:

Bill the blurred grasses have not been blurred by me - in fact if one looks closely you can see some remaining noise on them. I puposely did not blur them even more as it resulted in a very two dimensional look of the sand bank.

Sorry Tobie. You said that you had increased the BG blur, and it appeared to me that some of the tips of the grasses might have been involved (I've had that problem). My apologies if that's not the case.

[Tobie Schalkwyk]

Sorry Tobie. You said that you had increased the BG blur, and it appeared to me that some of the tips of the grasses might have been involved (I've had that problem). My apologies if that's not the case.

No prob's Bill, I might have slipped up in one or two areas too! :c3:

[Tobie Schalkwyk]

Some cleanup done based on feedback - thanks for all the replies! :S3:

http://www.birdphotographers.net/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=143134&d=1406045249

[arash_hazeghi]

Sweet landing pose in good light, the repost is an improvement. From the size of catchlight looks like head wasn't quite sharp. I might try to define the catchlight a bit better