White-winged Crossbill - male.

[Daniel Cadieux]

I hit the jackpot this morning when a flock of WW Crossbills came down to eye level for a LONG period of time!! They dont often come out in the open, but when they do boy oh boy they put on a show :-) Quite entertaining...and rather tame too - kinda reminds me of small Pine Grosbeaks.

Canon 40D + 100-400L @400mm, aperture priority, eval metering, 1/640s., f7.1, ISO 400, +0.33 EC, natural light, handheld, 90% full-frame.

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Beautiful specimen, details and eye contact. The perch looks great, too. There are some pretty weird blue halos around the needles and cones.

[Daniel Cadieux]

Yes, and the RAW files are the same way too...oh well, first ever photographic opportunity with this species so I won't complain too much ;-)

[Aidan Briggs]

Wonderful pose and details. I love the perch too. Ithink the bird could be a little higher up in the frame though...I agree with Axel on the halos around the cones.

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Yes, and the RAW files are the same way too...oh well, first ever photographic opportunity with this species so I won't complain too much ;-)

That is odd, must be the lens then.

I saw my first flock of WW Crossbills yesterday but I didn't get nearly as close as you did.

[Stephen Stephen]

Beautiful male here Dan. and I love the details in the eye and bill. I'll be going out tomorrow morning to see if they're still there. I'd love to dad this species to my photo collection.

[Fabs Forns]

It looks like heavy duty chromatic aberration. You may try to correct that on ACR at conversion, there's a tab for that. The image would be worth the trouble.

[Tony Whitehead]

Lovely eye contact and sharpness with good use of DOF. That's quite a tail contortion. I must admit that the blue halos are what really caught my eye on opening this - having trouble understanding them as they seem inconsistent with CA as they same colour is all around the OOF areas. I might be tempted to burn in the cones on the right a little.

[James Galletto]

Wow this is awesome.

[Bob Blanchard]

Great image Dan. Love the comp with the diagonal and the pine cones. Great DOF control and exposure. No improvements from me on this one! Looks perfect.

[Paul Lagasi]

Wow Dan seen lots of these beauties..but never this close...great shot, the eye, the bill and feathers all are tack sharp...Paul

[Jim Fenton]

Dan....

Head sharpness is excellent as is the eye contact.

To my eyes, the sky really takes away from the image.

On my monitor, it appears exceedingly saturated (sky), to much toward the cyan end of the world and I don't understand what's going on around the branches / needles...it doesn't look like CA to me?

[Sid Garige]

Like the out of box image of this guy. Well done.

[allanrube]

Daniel - I brought your image into PS and reduced both blue and cyan saturation as much as I could. Then I lightened both of them a bit.
What do you think?

http://allanrube.smugmug.com/photos/449333924_WvyJe-X3.jpg

[Daniel Cadieux]

Allan good job in getting rid of the blue "stuff" in the pines!!

[Bob Blanchard]

Yup - love the repost. Good work Allan!