Green Heron Close-up

[Anthony Barsotti]

Here's one from about a month ago, shot on my 1DX Mark II and 600mm f/4 IS II with the 1.4x Extender III. Shot at f/5.6 1/2000 ISO 1600, processed in ACR and slight noise reduction with Topaz AI Clear. Cropped about 75% for composition and to remove a dark shadow cast by the branch it was perched on. Hope you like it, thanks for looking.

[Bill Dix]

Good and sharp on the eye, and nice action implied by the water drops off the fish. I only wish for more DOF, or the heron to be parallel to the sensor.

[Colin Driscoll]

Nice action and face detail. Ditto to Bill's DOF comments.

[Jack Backs]

This is one of those images that just drives you crazy.....if only the fish had been in focus.. it would have been outstanding.

[Aditya Sridhar]

This is beautiful Anthony! While I tend to agree with the DOF comments, looking at your settings and your proximity to the bird, I imagine you couldn't have been able to stop down to a small enough aperture to achieve sufficient DOF anyway, and that would've degraded image quality due to the very high ISO. Taking everything into account, I think this is about as good as you could've done in this situation where everything's a compromise.

Coming to the positives, I love the C-shaped streak of the water droplets. Nice view of the prey item and the bird's eye is crazy sharp. Cleaning up the small particle on the bird's head would make this perfect I think. Really well executed!

[John Mack]

Being more parallel would have been ideal. This is still very nice though. Focus is right where it should be. Love the water drops.

[Anthony Barsotti]

Thanks for the feedback everyone! Definitely wish it was parallel to the sensor, I think had I been laying down handholding I probably could have gotten closer to that but with my camera mounted on my tripod I think it prohibited me from
getting down low enough. I do wish I had shot it at a slightly higher shutter speed to have a little less blurring on the water droplets although the more I look at it the more I’m ok with it since it helps imply motion. Didn’t even notice that particle on the head though, definitely going to spot heal that out. Thanks again!