Meet Mr. & Mrs. Intense

This cute pair was imaged at Cape Coral on Artie's IPT last month. The light was fading, so aperture choices limited. A pretty good example of the D700 ISO performance.

I wish I had more room at the bottom, but tipping the camera down brought in too much blurry foreground, standing up made the angle on the birds less desirable, plus the females feet were in the burrow a bit! I thought this was the best compromise.

D700 500mm f/4 with 1.4 TC f/6.3 1/250s ISO 2000 fill flash -3.0

There was so much detail in the file, that I had to use a very high compression ratio to fit under the 200kb limit, so quality has suffered.

Comments appreciated.

Randy

Randy,

Very good image considering the conditions, the number of photographers and small area made the shooting challenging.

I like it Randy Both in the same plane and sharp, good poses and exposure. Agree with your assessment on the bottom, feet are clipped a bit.

Just wondering about the flash setting, would suggest less compensation. A catchlight is not evident. The increase would enhance the image and even help with apparent sharpness.

This is great. I love the fact you got both sharp. Those stares are fabulous. Well done. :)

Alfred:

The catch light is just barely visible in this compressed image, much more noticeable, though not big, in the raw file. Victim of the compression I am afraid. I had the chance to do about twenty frames of these guys, and was adjusting the flash fill, to try and get the most pleasing balance of natural and art. light. I do agree that a better catchlight would be nice, but I chose this one for the overall image quality.

Thanks for the input

Randy

I like it, I think flash helped here although I would've removed the flash catchlights, poses and detail are great, maybe it could use a bit more USM. Congratulations!

Great sighting to capture two together Randy. I like the feather detail shown on both, and their eyes are always special. Congrats on a super image.