Blue Tit

[Thomas Herou]

Pentax K20D
Sigma AF 400/5,6 Apo Macro
1/500s, f/6,3, ISO 400

[Fabs Forns]

Hi Thomas, good to see you here :)

Lovely mood and set-up for a pretty little bird. Sharp and well composed. The light is good where it needs to be and the dark background brings him out.

[Thomas Herou]

Thanks,Fabs.My vacation is soon to come,and hopefully,it will produce a couple of thousand pictures! :)

[Robert Smith]

Best of luck with pic opportunities on your vacation!

I like this one but the branches and buds on the left distract just a tad - I think because the budding leaves are a similar color to some parts of the tit. Cool little bird, thanks for sharing!

[Jose Suro]

Great soft-spotlight effect on the bird. I like this!

Jose

[Roger Clark]

Very nice image, but to me the banding in the background is a distraction. Was the background brought up from the dark floor?
Was the banding caused by 8-bit processing?

Roger

[Mike Dale]

Love the little Blue Tit, that is superb. The background needs a bit of work to smooth it out.

[Thomas Herou]

Thanks all!The "banding" is branches out of focus in front of and behind the bird.I don't know if it's better to clean the picture or let them be.I'm often for the natural look.But,of course,I like a little controlled "mess" in the pictures.

[Roger Clark]

Thomas,
I find that hard to understand. I see 7+ levels around the bird's head in classic zones due to integer truncation of a brightness gradient. The zones extend from the bird's head in all upper directions but is especially prominent toward the upper left. The contours follow the brightness gradient. This is also called posterization. I see out-of focus banding toward the lower left that could be due to other twigs/branches in the image, but I have never seen out of focus things create the integer posterization effect along an intensity gradient. If so, that is really strange bokeh and looks unnatural to me.

Roger