Northern Cardinal (f)

[Joseph Przybyla]

I captured this image of a female Northern Cardinal at Circle B Bar Reserve in Polk County, Florida. Comments and critique welcomed and appreciated. Thank you for viewing.

Nikon D500
Nikon 500mm F/5.6 VR AF-S ED PF, camera and lens supported by a Oben carbon fiber monopod with a Wimberly MonoGimbal head
1/2500 F/5.6 Matrix Metering EV +1 ISO 6400 Auto 1 WB, image captured at 500mm (750mm 35mm Equivalent)
Post processed in Lightroom Classic, Photoshop CC 2021 and Neat Image for noise reduction
Cropped from horizontal to vertical for composition and presentation

[Daniel Cadieux]

Pretty lady, they are always a treat. I like that you chose a vertical composition, but would also love to see the cardinal touch lower in the frame (half below, double above). Lovely tan ang green background - those oof twigs are unfortunate though. We have a female cardinal up here in one of our popular trails that eats in the hand...very neat experience.

[Brian Sump]

Joe, wish we had Cardinals here. Win some, lose some I guess.

Lots of nice detail available and like the pose a lot. Agree with Dan, bummer on the bkg twigs - might go ahead and blot out that bright white spot at right.

Props for trying to push the ISO so far on the D500. I could never get much past 2000 to my liking with it. This one does have a good bit of noise still though, esp in the bkg so I think it would have a more pleasing effect if you could pull it back a bit.

[Jonathan Ashton]

Lovely shot, the details in the bird are good. the twigs in the background don't really bother me but having said that they don't really add much, I suspect their visual presence could be minimised just leaving a hint there. The green background especially does shot a little noise but that can easily be fixed.

[John Mack]

Image quality looks great for the ISO. I do like the vertical framing. The colors on the bird look very nice in the diffused light.

[Joseph Przybyla]

Thanks everyone for viewing and commenting, much appreciated. I did some more work on the image cleaning up the out of focus branch. Here is a repost.

[Jonathan Ashton]

Repost pretty good/clean .........(except bottom right hand corner!)

[Joseph Przybyla]

Thanks everyone for viewing and commenting, much appreciated.