Red Winged Blackbird

[Alex Becker]

Hi all,


Here's a Red Winged Black Bird from NJ taken at around 10am or so when the clouds started to part. He took off right after this frame but I liked the tail spread pose and perch. In post, I removed a leaf from under the bird, did some tonal adjustments, some light noise reduction on the bird and background, sharpened. I cropped about 20% off here. Should have gone to f/7.1 -- next time.

Camera: Nikon D500
Lens: 200-500mm f/5.6 at 500mm
Specs: 1/800 ISO 800 f/5.6

Thanks for looking!
Alex

[gail bisson]

Lovely frame Alex! Love the color palette and the fanned tail.
Nice and sharp on the head and breast. The eye looks great
As you said, more DOF would have been great but at 500mm even F 10 would not get that tail within DOF.
Gail

[Daniel Cadieux]

Looks like it is imitating an American Redstart! Nice techs, good processing. I'm OK with the dof, the face is nice and sharp. I love that a bit of the far epaulette is showing. You could probably tone down the brightest part of the perch in LLC. Pretty neat overall.

[William Dickson]

Very nice Alex. Love that facial expression. Good detail on the bird and all fits well with the BG.

Will

[Bill Dix]

Great display pose; good background and exposure. Yes, f/7.1 might have brought a bit more into focus, but as Gail says, not the tail.

[Geoffrey Montagu]

Excellent feather display on this beauty, Alex. Very nice tonal range in the blacks.

Geoffrey




http://500px.com/geoffreymontagu (http://500px.com/geoffreymontagu)

[Alex Becker]

Thanks all so much! Daniel, good suggestion re: lowering the brightness on the LLC. Best, Alex

[David Salem]

Nice looking frame Alex! I like the pose and the details in this one. The exposure looks good too. Like Gail mentioned, you probably couldn't get the tail sharp no matter what aperture you shot at. Well done