Lesser (or Greater ?) Scaup Duck Triplet

http://moesphotohobby.weebly.com/upl...84973_orig.jpg


A triplet of diver ducks were hanging out near the river. I'm not sure if these are Greater or Lesser Scaups? Maybe someone can chime in on the identification.

The day was cloudy, and so less than ideal for flight shots. I kept the shutter speed low to avoid pushing ISO higher than 800. BG is an eroded hill with various layers of sand and some leaf-less trees.

Processed first through DPP 4 (Noise, Chrominance, Lens adjustments, exposure), and final editing in Photoshop (~20% cropped out, levels, resize, sharpening)

Critiques are welcomed and wanted. Thanks for looking.


Setup:

Canon 7D MK II
Canon 300mm f/4 + 1.4x tele = 420mm
Wide open f/5.6
Shutter 1/800
ISO 800

Nice to have three in the frame with alternating wing position. I like the background too.

Moe:

This is always a challenging type of shot, to get them all in the same plane, no overlaps, and it turned out well. I haven't seen enough images yet to know for sure, but am a bit surprised that you can push up the ISO a bit more with the Mk II, as long as you don't underexpose it too much and have to bring up the frame in post.

Perhaps the Canon crew will chime in on this one

Cheers

Randy

This is a pleasing frame, and your BG works well with these birds. Nice formation and wing positions.

Thanks for the comments guys.

Randy, I'm still getting to know my new 7D mk II, I've only had it for a week. From my limited experience it seems better than my old 7D, and so far I'm happy with how it handles noise at ISO levels of 800 and 1600. Like you said, you need to nail exposure and avoid under exposing. Images seem to clean up nicely in post-processing, especially when using DPP4.