Easy Mallards

[SimonDuval]

While I was waiting for the Wood ducks, Sir Mallard was cleaning himself!
Shot with Olympus E-30, 300mm f2.8 + 1.4x, cropped a little bit, ajusted contrast in post-processing, sharpenned for web.

1/250s f/7.1 at 425.0mm iso400
http://www.pbase.com/duvalsimon/image/133883141.jpg

Your comments are welcome.
Simon

[Kerry Perkins]

Hello Simon, nice job on this capture! Mallards make great subjects and the preening shots are a bonus as you got here. I like the colors and pose a lot and you have a very nice background. I might clone out the feather floating in the lower right part of the image. Feels like it could use just a tiny bit of CCW rotation. Good job, look forward to seeing more. :c3:

[Cody Covey]

This could've benefited from a bit faster SS i think as the tail end is a bit blurred. Also the white part is a bit hot but the rest of the bird seems well exposed. YOu are in a good place to learn thats for sure. Welcome!

[Julie Kenward]

That back of the bird is a bit blurry - might be more of an aperture thing than a ss adjustment because I doubt that the tail was moving around faster than the rest of the body during preening but the tail is definitely angled further away from the camera sensor than the head/middle are. With such a clean BG you could have gotten away with stopping down a bit more or waiting until the bird's body was completely parallel to the sensor plane.

Other than that, beautiful and well executed image. You brought out all the details in the different feathers and the saturation and exposure of the head look great.