Male Downy

[Todd Frost]

Male downy on apple tree branch. Took a break and gave me a nice look back.
D2h, 400 2.8 w/1.4tc, 1/400, f4, iso640, man exp.
Thanks for looking, comments and critiques appreciated.
Todd

[John Chardine]

Nice one Todd. I loke the lookback too. Getting these guys at eye-level is sometime a challenge! The green background is very good but wish the OOF branch wasn't there.

[Axel Hildebrandt]

I like the look-back pose, eye contact and angle and agree that the OOF branches in the BG are a bit distracting.

[Daniel Cadieux]

Nice look-back pose. I agree with the OOF branches above. I may be mistaken and I apologize in advance if I am, but the contours of the perch and it's twigs are rather soft and there seemingly are some PP artefacts along it above the WP's head...was there some masking/BG work done?

[Todd Frost]

Thanks for the comments, agree on the oof in bg.
Daniel, had a look at the nef and the areas mentioned are blurred as well. The dof with the 400 2.8 wide open (used 1.4 tc here but wide open) is so small I can only assume those areas are out of the plane of focus. With the D2h noise control is not one of its strong points, so noise reduction could come into play as well. Its been a while since this was processed so I don't remember how aggressive the reduction was.
Todd

[Arsdel Fluesmeier]

Excellent pose IMO. The detail is very good. I believe I would remove the OOF branch and I might
even look at the other two.