Bateleurs

[Ken Watkins]

Taken at Lebala concession, Northern Botswana, 7th October 2004

EOS 1D MkII

100-400 at 400

F10, 1/200, ISO 100 (I know better now?)

[Daniel Cadieux]

Nice to have two on the same perch! Are these male and female (I notice one's wing patch is lighter)? Good HAs from both too. I like the perch - the thicker tangle in LRC nicely balances the two individuals. F/10 was enough to get them both perfectly sharp (at least as posted). Did you need to lighten the bellies? There seems to be the semblance of noise starting to creep up there, especially for ISO 100.

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Great to have two in the frame and the head angles are good, too. I might sharpen the birds a bit more. Would a less steep angle have been possible?

[Stu Bowie]

Great double Ken, and good job on the blacks. Yep, we look back at our settings from the past, and shake our heads at what we now know better.

[Jeff Cashdollar]

ISO 200 would have yeilded a stop of light, same for 400. That with a wider aperture could really boost shutter and bring out fine detail.

[Morkel Erasmus]

nice double Ken! blacks nicely exposed, but I detected a colour cast on the birds and checked it out.

I believe you won't mind me playing with it a bit :).

Here's my attempt - first increased blacks in the black and neutral channels by 5% (selective colour), then just selected the blue sky, then inverted to have the bateleurs and perch. Did a saturation adjustment layer in which I desaturated the cyan, green and magenta channels on the raptors. Then I applied slight noise reduction on the bellies and sharpened a bit more.

Would like to know what you think? To my eye it looks closer to the true colours of the bird under standard lighting conditions - but you were there. :D

[Steve Canuel]

Cool looking birds and nice to get a double! I like Morkel's work with the blacks.

[Jeff Cashdollar]

Repost looks good, blacks pop!

[Ken Watkins]

Saniel,

I am not that good at differentiating sexes, but I think it is highly probable. Yes there is a little noise due to lightening, I am afraid that back then I had no real idea of exposure settings.

Axel
We were in a vehicle below the birds, the high perching of raptors is always a nuisance.

Morkel

Your repost is much better, perhaps you could send me a PM explaining what you this in terms I can understand.

Stuart
My lack of knowledge in the early days is maddening, if I had this shot now I am sure I would do a lot better.

Thanks to everybody for your input.

[Morkel Erasmus]

thanks Ken...will PM you :)

[Ofer Levy]

Beautiful image!! Excellent work in getting them both sharp. There is a noticeable S/H halo around the birds.

[Ken Watkins]

Beautiful image!! Excellent work in getting them both sharp. There is a noticeable S/H halo around the birds.

I have no idea why as I did not use S/H.