California's Towhee with a catch

Attachment 143430

Got lucky with a close-up shot of this guy. Still 25% crop.
Canon 1D-X + 400mm f/5.6L + 1.4x III
560mm, f/8, 1/800, ISO 800, +0eV

great light and I like the food item. BG was nice too, sharp. You can post 1200 pixels wide for better viewing. A vertical also works here

Great image although I think that that insect would disagree :bg3: I like the light, detail and BG. You could go with a bit less sharpening.

I like the light and very neat food item. Sweet BG. The image is oversharpened as posted though.

Very nice super close up with sweet BG and good details everywhere. Food is a bonus. Agree that it needs a lot less sharpening thought. Well done.

Thanks everyone for the comments. I always have hard time perceiving sharpness on my retinal macbook pro. Here is the image without applying output sharpening. Pls let me know if is good enough.

Attachment 143447

Amazing detail on this Sridatta! Awesome light and killer prey item. TFS

The light quality is killer. The head angle is awesome, and the prey item is really sweet. The sharpening looks better on the repost, but still leaves a little too be desired in the image quality department. With a 1D-x, at 75% of the image at this low of an ISO, I would expect more in the image quality department...Can you post a screen capture of the RAW file uncropped, just to compare....?

Thanks Richard and Shawn.

@Shawn - here is the uncropped image.

Attachment 143475

Super portrait with amazing light and background. The prey tells a great story here. Repost works better in terms of sharpening.

Thanks for the full frame...it clarifies what I was not getting in terms of image quality with that gear. I guess I misunderstood when you said that you photographed a "close up" of this bird and "still 25% crop"....I guess that meant you cropped off about 75% of the actual image, and the large crop explains the image quality deficit...