Glenn Pure
01-19-2018, 01:04 AM
173637
I'll admit to posting this for its novelty. The bird is a male Shaft-tailed Whydah in breeding plumage. The long tail is part of that plumage. Normally there are four tail feathers but I didn't see any with all four. Taken in Etosha NP, Namibia in May this year next to one of the lodge waterholes. It was a delight to watch these flying around with other birds, presumably as part of his courtship ritual. Difficult composition choices due to the tail length. The crop is around half of the frame area, cropped from horizontal. Some distracting cut-off foliage cloned out.
Thank you for looking and for any comments you are kind enough to share.
Technical: Canon 80D with EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM at 400mm handheld. Manual exposure 1/2500 sec, f7.1, ISO 640. Processed in Canon DPP 4 (digital lens optimiser @ 50, sharpness = 3, crop, lighting adjustments, NR) then exported 16 bit TIFF to Photoshop Elements with Neat Image NR plugin. Modest NR to background mainly to keep file size down. Selective adjustments selectively to bird (reduce shadows, add midtone contrast). Bird only sharpened in PSE (Sharpness tool, remove Gaussian Blur: 0.6 pixels at 50%) after final size reduction.
I'll admit to posting this for its novelty. The bird is a male Shaft-tailed Whydah in breeding plumage. The long tail is part of that plumage. Normally there are four tail feathers but I didn't see any with all four. Taken in Etosha NP, Namibia in May this year next to one of the lodge waterholes. It was a delight to watch these flying around with other birds, presumably as part of his courtship ritual. Difficult composition choices due to the tail length. The crop is around half of the frame area, cropped from horizontal. Some distracting cut-off foliage cloned out.
Thank you for looking and for any comments you are kind enough to share.
Technical: Canon 80D with EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM at 400mm handheld. Manual exposure 1/2500 sec, f7.1, ISO 640. Processed in Canon DPP 4 (digital lens optimiser @ 50, sharpness = 3, crop, lighting adjustments, NR) then exported 16 bit TIFF to Photoshop Elements with Neat Image NR plugin. Modest NR to background mainly to keep file size down. Selective adjustments selectively to bird (reduce shadows, add midtone contrast). Bird only sharpened in PSE (Sharpness tool, remove Gaussian Blur: 0.6 pixels at 50%) after final size reduction.