Malachite Kingfisher #3

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My first sighting of one of these little beauties. This was opportunistic. We'd just arrived at the water's edge ready for the boat trip to our lodge in the Okavango Delta when I looked sideways from the vehicle and saw this bird at fairly close range low under a tree. Luckily it stayed around long enough for a few frames, posing nicely although a simple 'bird on a stick' shot. Crop is just under half the frame area.

Thanks for looking and any comments you may have.

Capture details: Canon 80D with EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM at 400mm handheld. Manual exposure 1/160 sec, f7.1, ISO 640 (set for brighter light while we were out driving). Processed in Canon DPP 4 (digital lens optimiser @ 50, sharpness = 3, crop, lighting adjustments, default NR) then exported 16 bit TIFF to Photoshop Elements with Neat Image NR plugin. Very light NR applied to bird and stronger NR to background. Main subject only sharpened in PSE (Sharpness tool, remove Gaussian blur) after final size reduction.

Glenn super shot, nice details and BG, I would move it up and to the left a bit if it were mine (but it's not)
wish the head angle was slightly towards you but not a deal killer.

-Tim

Beautiful Glenn, I agree about slight reposition otherwise spot on. You could consider brightening very slightly the area around the right periphery of the eye. Maybe a slight adjustment to the neck stripe to see if you could get a tad more detail but as I said very nice indeed.

It is hard for me to dislike any malachite kingfisher image!!
The IQ and techs are excellent.
For my taste, I find the bird quite large in the frame and would loosen the crop.
My eye is also drawn to the brownish OOF area just below the tip of the bill. It is more noticeable on the thumbnail. I would dodge the area.
I am OK with the HA even though not "the perfect HA"!
Very nicely done considering this guy was in the shade,
Gail

Such a pretty bird with great colors. IQ is very nice. Another vote to loosen the crop and brighten the area around the eye / eye itself if it doesn't look unnatural. Perhaps a bit off the left and more to the right. TFS

Thank you Tim, Jon, Gail and Alex. Here is a repost with a slightly looser crop - but running out of frame at the bottom to do much more without extending canvas. Also I'm now having to clone out leaves on lower left and right which I don't usually like to do. I've done some lighting adjustments on the white parts to reduce and around the eye to lighten (I had originally just reduced shadows on the eye only) - all to bring out a touch more detail, but subtle. Forgot to mention in OP that I reduced saturation on the background too. Gail, I've dodged the brown blob to make it less obvious. Hope you like this one better.

Attachment 172188

Hi Glenn, I am a little late to this party but just wanted to say, nice image. If mine I would smooth out the two out of focus branches in front of the bird. Beautiful bird, nicely shown. Thank you for sharing.