Blue Duck

[Ian McHenry]

These cute little New Zealand torrent ducks are usually very active in aviaries, but I managed to get this mid morning capture of a quiet moment.
Pentax K10D with Tamron 70-300 @ 70mm.
Slight crop.
Original in DNG RAW edited with PSE 5.
1/60 sec @ F5.6.
Comments welcome.
Ian McHenry

[Lana Hays]

Ian
I think you did a nice job with this image. The exposure looks good....especially to give such nice detail in the blacks. Very sharp as well. Given you were photographing at an aviary, I doubt that you could have gotten down lower so you take what you can get. I think it would be just a little better to have the bird more to the right in the image. Now if you could have gotten his attention for you to give you and over the shoulder look would have been nice.

[joel quenneville]

Given you were photographing at an aviary, I doubt that you could have gotten down lower so you take what you can get.


I agree about the lower angle. Also, the whites are blown on the beak but these might be fixed by converting differently. Otherwise, you have good image and good exposure.

[Ian McHenry]

Thanks Lana & Joel
This impresses on me that high speed continuous is preferable when potential for a nice bird picture.
Incidentally I used the free conversion Rawtherapee.
Ian McHenry

[Jim Neiger]

Hi Ian,

Looks like you did a good job on the exposure here. You have lots of detail in the black areas and the whites look ok to me. The image is nice and sharp too. I think the image could be improved with a lower shooting angle and a better head angle on the duck.