Snail Kite banking in a left turn

[David Ornstein]

1D Mk iii
1/1250 @ f/10.0
100-400 zoom @ 380mm
Manual +0.45
ISO 800
Evaluative metering
March 27, 0904 EDT

Is the bird too dark? Is the composition "pleasing"?

[Doug Brown]

Like the banking pose and eye contact David. The exposure looks fine and the composition is nice. It's the sharpness that isn't quite there. I would apply some additional sharpening. I would also lighten the iris a little.

[David Ornstein]

This version is further sharpened.

[Arthur Morris]

Yikes. You way overdid the sharpening in the repost. The OP was a bit too contrasty for my taste, the darsk too dark, and I find myseld wishing for a more dorsal view. Good job on lightening the BKGR in the repost.

[Mike Lentz]

Yikes. You way overdid the sharpening in the repost. The OP was a bit too contrasty for my taste, the darsk too dark, and I find myseld wishing for a more dorsal view. Good job on lightening the BKGR in the repost.

Ditto what Artie said. I also see a sharpening halo in that first image.

[Randy Stout]

David:

I wonder how big of a crop this is from the original? Yes, there are some sharpening issues, but it just doesn't seem to have the detail I would expect.

Randy

[David Ornstein]

Thanks everyone. Of course I recognized the horrible oversharpening, but I wanted to share what came out of USM 60/3/1 on the L channel of LAB color. The RGB's halo was as big as the bird (well, not really). The crop is 1/3 of the frame (i.e., 2/3 gone). The absence of those 7+MPX is likely the main problem. I'm going to try again starting from RAW.

[Grady Weed]

The huge crop is hurting you here. It also is over saturated, as you already know. Go back to your RAW file, as stated, and try once more. It still seems a bit soft however. You might want to try for another shot. Thanks for posting.

[arash_hazeghi]

Nice shot, I think this crop has been up-sized and thus there are interpolated pixels which don't contain real information, I think posting at native size is better. If it is not an upsize then something is wrong with sharpening.

[David Ornstein]

I really appreciate the excellent commentary. Thanks to all of those who took time to help me. I went back to the .CR2 and started from scratch. To maintain the "feel" of the image I had to again do the big crop. The darkness problem was easy compared to the sharpness problem. I've come to realize that the softness - especially of the wing tips (L > R) - is going to generate too much noise if I sharpen enough give it a "cxrisp" look.

Next trip I'll pay more attention to the basics regarding a sharp image.

An 800X640 px version of the "new" PP effort is my next reply.

Thanks again!

[David Ornstein]

See my prior reply.

[Arthur Morris]

The pane above is a huge improvement over the others many of which were distasters. For years my position has been that many folks who start with good images ruin them in Photoshop. That's why we came up with our Digital Basics File....