Woody practicing color harmony

[Randy Stout]

This woody drake was imaged this morning at a small vernal pond, courtesy of Roy VanLoo.
It was cool, about 34 degrees, but still, with nice light.
I chose this one because of the matching colors in background and bird.

Z6. 500mm f/4 with 1.4 TC. f/6.3 1.800 sec. ISO 220. Shot from my sled blind.
First time doing birds with the Z6. Shot with screen flipped out so I didn't have to bend over my usual right angle finder. Appreciated the easy adjustments to settings off the touch sensitive screen. Used a variety of metering and focusing mods at different times of the morning.

Post: Small crop to level, cleaned up pupil and several water spots.

Advice and comments always appreciated.

Cheers

Randy

[John Mack]

Nice one. Like the reflection and the overall mood to this one. Darker background is great.

[David Roach]

The reflection, killer water and complimentary BG all add to this wonderful canvas. Not to mention the detail and color on the subject. Love everything about this one. TFS
ps
Sounds like an alright first mirrorless outing. Welcome to the party...

[Tim Foltz]

Randy, Nice colors, details, HA, catch light and BG.

-Tim

[Randy Stout]

Thanks everyone.

David: mirrorless does bring a different skill set to the table. The tracking on the Z6 isn't up to the best DSLR standards, but for many things it is adequate. The accuracy on stationary subjects is outstanding. It has also been fun using a bunch of legacy glass via the FTZ adapter. The focus peaking works great and makes manual focusing very easy.

Cheers

Randy

[Bill Dix]

Another gorgeous woodie, with perfect head turn. Lovely colors. Congrats on the new gear.

[Dorian Anderson]

Watery foreground and reflection are lovely. Eye contact is perfect. I would think about rotating the image maybe 0.5 degrees CW to perfectly level the rings (at least to my eye). I do wish the head was a bit crisper, but I have no idea what a Z6 is and how it handles details.

[William Dickson]

Looking real good here....Beautiful contrasty colours and they look good on the bird against the BG. Nice detail and separation from the BG makes it look almost 3D here.

Will

[Arthur Morris]

Nicely done. Looks quite level to me. Working with mirrorless requires a new mindset when you realize that you are looking at pixels not at the bird. At least for me.

with love, artie

[arash_hazeghi]

Cool shot Randy, wish you had posted larger for those viewing on a big screen I like the spot light effect but missing just a bit more detail in the blacks.

I recently borrowed a Z6 from NPS to try it for taking 4K videos of my infant, unfortunately didn't work very well in my hands, it was very slow trying to track her when playing and the files just don't gave much detail compared to my D850 or even D5 for that matter. Nikon need to work a bit harder to succeed in the mirrorless world.