Paramour on Pond Apple at Dawn

EOS R EF 100-400 1.4tc 560mm f8 1/640 iso1000

Great to be back!
In late 2008 lost job in banking crash and wore out the shutter on my 1DmkIIn. Recently retired, still had some old, but tried and true, canon glass. So I started looking at Sony's new cameras with trepidation(heard the converters are unreliable). Wanted to wait for 7DmkIII but I just couldn't. After 10 years away from this soul enriching hobby, I could not waste another fall/winter(favorite time for birders in South Florida). So, nerd that I am(did I mention retired Software Engineer), I pulled the trigger on the new EOS R despite the 5fps.
This image was created right at sun up. This beauty is working on his/her mating plumage as nesting season is almost here. I couldn't resist this opportunity(even though the distance was far) as the sun hit that face with shaded cypress as dark BG. This is a sizable crop and I have just begun researching workflow tools and processing. Very little done here in DPP as I was trying to comprehend Arash And Artie's writeup.
BTW, AF at F8 was sweet! I was in servo AF aimed at the neck as this beauty was looking all over and even tried some early displays.
As always, thanks for the learnings...

I like the lighting, exposure on the heron looks good. I would remove the blues from the heron and consider a little more sharpening, I suspect a faster shutter speed would have been beneficial with such a high MP camera.

Thanks Jonathon for the tips. I am relearning (studying post processing) and did no sharpening except the presets. Still reading up on best use of DPP and PS as I've been away from this for 10 years. Could you please explain how high MPs affect shutter speed setting. Thanks for the learnings.

Cameras with high pixel counts have the ability to capture fine detail. By the same token they equally well capture areas that are not perfectly sharp. Less than perfectly sharp images will be exemplified by these high res cameras. As a rule of thumb I would go for shutter speed at least double the reciprocal of your focal length.

Got it. Thanks Jonathon.

Bird stands out well against that dark background and i like the composition.

I had great hopes for this image as I scrolled from the top of the image down. But for me, the mangroves (???) are an image killer even in the early morning light (that was unfortunately filtered, i.e., partially blocked.

with love, artie