European Roller

[Ken Watkins]

A regular and most welcome visitor in our summer, this one was taken on Savute Marsh, Chobe National Park, Botswana, 6th January 2011

EOS 1D MKIV

500mm F4 hand-held

F7.1, ISO 400, 1/2500,EV +0.33

[PRABIR BHATTACHARYYA]

Ken, what a bird and what capture! These Rollers are beautiful, a treat to the eyes.
The beauty of the bird does not need any more comments from me.
Thanks for sharing.

[Mital Patel]

superb plumage and image ken. is this big crop ? cuz i see bit of a noise overall

[Ken Watkins]

Mital,

This is about 25%, the noise is not overly noticable before downsizing and compression.

[Joe Senzatimore]

One fine image of a beautiful subject. Comp. is perfect as is the perch and BG.

[Roger Clark]

Hi Ken,

beautiful capture. The light angle is perfect, giving beautiful fine texture (phase angle looks to be about 20 to 30 degrees). Head angle is great too, as is the composition.
Nicely done. I would experiment with brightening the bird just a little.

Roger

[Melissa Groo]

Beautiful job, Ken. Good suggestion by Roger to experiment with bringing up brightness just a tad, would like to see that. Great IQ for such a crop. Love the colors.

[gail bisson]

Lovely comp and clean BG. Good HA. I too, see a bit of noise in the bird when there really shouldn't be any with these techs. What would do this I wonder? A lovely shot none the less,
Gail

[Geir Jensen]

A beautiful picture. I liked very much Comp:bg3:

[arash_hazeghi]

nice portrait and good HA. it looks as if the original was underexposed and you had to raise exposure in post, there is visible noise in the feathers....

[Ken Watkins]

Thanks everybody for your comments and suggestions, lightening the image a bit definitely improves things. Where the noise comes from other than under exposure I have no idea, must have done something wrong in the processing, because it is not there in the RAW.

I am old enough to remember when a bit of "grain" was considered fashionable, I suppose that because it can now be removed or lessened it is less acceptable nowadays.

[Ofer Levy]

Nice pose, eye contact and sharp. The large crop effected IQ but it still holds nicely.