Wigeon portrait

[John Chardine]

These American Wigeon males are looking pretty good this time of year as they prepare to mate and nest.

I had the 500 x 1.4 on and unexpectedly this bird and his partner came too close to get the whole bird in so I went for a "head and shoulders". A crop refined this. Some NR performed on A and B channels of LAB. At 1/60s I think the image shows some movement of the body as the bird swam by. I should have gone to 800 (which is child's play for the mark IV) but it all happened so fast!

Date: 25 April, 2010, Time: 19:51h
Model: Canon EOS-1D Mark IV
Lens: EF500mm f/4L IS USM +1.4x @ 700 mm
Program: Aperture Priority
ISO 400, 1/60s, f/6.3
Exp. comp.: +0.7
Flash: no flash, Flash exp. comp.:

[Todd Frost]

Good looking bird. Agree with the self assessment re: sharpness and iso. With these guys at least down here they are never too close and very flighty. TFS
Todd

[Arthur Morris]

I like the water, the light, the SQ crop, and the repost. Why do I like the repost better?

[Dave Mills]

You lightened the eye....

[Arthur Morris]

And the rest of the face with Tim Gray's non-destructive Dodge and Burn.

[Axel Hildebrandt]

I like the mood, light and eye contact. Too bad you didn't have time to raise the ISO.

[John Chardine]

Thanks to all and to Artie for the repost. I wanted to look at the repost on a Windows monitor at work because images tend to look duller there than at home on the Mac Cinema Display. Anyway, I came to the same conclusion on each- for me Artie's repost is just a little too light around the head and eye. I think an in-between effect might be better but at this stage I think we are talking just personal preference rather than hard and fast rules of image processing. I'll have a go later today.

Just a query- I assume the "Tim Grey" method is producing a new layer with Overlay blending mode and fill with 50% grey, then painting with a black or white brush?

[Arthur Morris]

Half way would work for me. I always worry about over-doing a change for emphasis. The original post is too dark in and about the face/eye socket. Yes to the above except no need for the gray fill. And the brush should be at 10-20% at most.

[John Chardine]

OK, it sounds like a different method Artie. The one I am referring to relies on filling a layer with neutral grey at 50%, setting the blending mode for the layer to Overlay, then painting with a very subtle black or white brush to darken or lighten. With Overlay blending mode, 50% grey makes no change to the image, 0-49% lightens and 51-100% darkens.

[Arthur Morris]

It sounds quite similar only I hit B-D-X to lighten at about 10% and then X again to darken at 10%. In this method the only thing that filling with neutral gray does is allow you to see shape of the mask on the Layers palette. I think. :) Anyway, it works great.