Immature Bateleur

[Glenn Pure]

171150
One of the birdies from a trip to Africa this May. Taken on a track next to the Chobe River in Botswana. The bird kindly perched in a tree quite close to the track and not too high up begging to be photographed! Even posed with a nice purposeful stare, otherwise, nothing out of the ordinary here. I have lifted some shadows at the back of the neck a little and lightened shadows on the eye also. The crop represents 15% of the frame area. I had most of the bird in the original capture (minus tail) but the perch was rather messy so I've gone for this portrait.

Technical: Canon 80D with EF 100-400 MkII at 400mm handheld. Manual exposure 1/2000 sec, f7.1, ISO 800. Processed in Canon DPP 4 (digital lens optimiser @ 50, sharpness = 3, crop, lighting adjustments, default NR) then exported 16 bit TIFF to Photoshop Elements with Neat Image NR plugin. Very light NR applied to bird and stronger NR to background. Sharpened (Sharpness tool) after final size reduction.

[gail bisson]

Good IQ (especially considering the size of the crop!) with nice BG- like the hint of fluffy white clouds.
I like the ruffled feathers on the crown and neck. His feathers sure are worn and he looks ready for a good moult- which adds to the story.
It would have been really nice if the sun/ eagle had been in a position to light up the eye completely.
Very nice and when i see the good IQ for such a crop size , it makes me rethink my rule of "don't post it if I have to crop more than 50%"!
Gail

[John Whaley]

Wow - great feather detail and tack sharp. IQ looks good. Agree with Gail that it would have been a bonus to get more light on the eye but overall a very nice portrait. You might try warming the bird a couple of points.

[Stu Bowie]

Hi Glenn, a beautiful image of a Juvie Bateleur - you should have saved this for next month's theme. :w3 ( no worries you can still post others next month ) I like the HA, and you have brought out the feather detail around the next so well - sharp too. The clouds in the sky BG rounds the image off nicely.

[Glenn Pure]

Thank you very much Gail, John and Stu. I appreciate you taking the time to provide your insights. Stu, I momentarily forgot about the juvenile theme for the September comp! Oh well. I agree, Gail, that more light on the eye would have been nice but nature has a habit of getting in the way of the best laid plans! As for the tight crop, I am pushing the limits here, especially with the camera/lens combination. Everything has to come together to stand a chance of such a tight crop working, which it luckily did in this case. I think the good SS and low ISO helped a lot here.

Gail, with your camera and lens combination (assuming 1DX and 600) I'm surprised you can't crop a lot harder most of the time. But I guess you're just being safe?

[gail bisson]

Hi Glenn,
I am obsessed with having excellent IQ and I firmly believe that the more pixels in the image the better the IQ. I am especially careful when posting to BPN ! But realistically, as long as one has 1200 pixels on the long side (BPN sizing) in the final crop, image will look fine.
Gail

Gail, with your camera and lens combination (assuming 1DX and 600) I'm surprised you can't crop a lot harder most of the time. But I guess you're just being safe?[/QUOTE]