THEME: Keel-billed toucan, up close and personal

[Jake Levin]

This is a pano crop because it comes from one of those shots where the bird popped up out of nowhere and there wasn't time to arrange everything perfectly without sacrificing a chance at a head shot. I picked 16x9 to get rid of the empty space above the bird that resulted from his being rather low in frame (again, no time to set it up exactly as I wanted it) and to emphasize that long and colourful bill. I had the 1.4 converter on the lens at the time, and I can't really remember why - I might have switched from a songbird spot over to where the toucans liked to go - but that extra length more or less limited me to close-ups.

The editing, post DPP conversion, involved some bill clean-up, shadow/highlight adjustment, and a bit of added warmth to compensate for the fill flash.


Canon 5D mkIV, 500mm f/4 IS, 1.4x TC III on a tripod at a feeder setup.
1/2000 @ f/7.1, ISO 800
Fill flash, ETTL @ -2.

Merci, gracias, Danke!
Jake

[Isaac Grant]

Nice details here with a perfect background. Excellent job with the bill clean up cause nothing shows. Not sure if what you were going for but the details are great in the beak, eyes and yellow. But they are almost completely lacking in the blacks. I would lift the exposure of the blacks and use some detail extractor to eke a bit more detail out of them. Think it will balance the rest of the photo nicely. Unless you were going for a spotlight on the face type of thing, in which case, just ignore what I said :bg3:

[Dorian Anderson]

Excellent, Jake! You can't go wrong with these guys! Yes, there is little detail in the black but this shot is all about the face and beak, I wouldn't sweat it.....

[gail bisson]

Very very nice!
I have long wanted such an image in my portfolio.
Great comp, BG and the bill and face look awesome.
I would never have known you did any bill clean up so good job on that.
I would try to get some more details out of the blacks with you can- DE/TC at 50/50 in NIK EFEX PRO would do the trick. I usually use 15-30% opacity,
Gail

[Ivan Sjogren]

The face and the bill really pops against that dark background. Stunning colors, pose and BG. The bright parts looks spot on! I'm a bit more skeptical towards the lack of details in the blacks though but it is down to personal taste and your vision for the image.

[John Mack]

Great colors on this toucan. Like the background and the overall composition.

[annmpacheco]

Jake, you have a winner here, please work out the blacks... repost please!

[Arthur Morris]

Looks great to me. I am fine with the BLACKs as presented. If you go work on them DO NOT OVERDO it.

with love, artie

[Jake Levin]

Thanks to everyone for your replies! I did just a little work on the blacks, but I tend to err on the side of leaving them a little dark, since there is no way to expose for the bill (which everyone in CR told me to do 100% of the time) and simultaneously get the right exposure for the black body, and you don't tend to see much detail there anyway, especially on a cloudy day. I've been having some trouble with the green background going horribly posterized and banded in Photoshop, so I started again on a fresh RAW conversion, using a different machine and monitor, and cloned in my fixes before adding a small levels adjustment to the body. There's more detail in the TIFF than the jpg, but I don't want to bring out the blacks so much that it looks unnatural.

Hope it's to your liking!
Jake

[Joseph Przybyla]

Your original looks great to me, I can see detail in the blacks on my display. With the bright yellow contrasting with the black perfect exposure of both is next to impossible. I think you did right exposing for the highlights and then recover the blacks in post processing. Thank you for sharing, Jake.