Another Mankwe Kingfisher - Malachite this time

[Tony Whitehead]

Another image from our Pilanesberg trip with Stu. There was quite a rash of these small Kingfishers and a number of juveniles. This was an adult that co-operated by perching nearby briefly.
Nikon D800 500VR + 1.4x
1/1000 f10 ISO 800 Matrix -0.66 SB900 fillflash -1 HH
LR4, CS6 - Some OOF twigs removed and some fish scales cleaned off the bill
Thanks for looking and offering suggestions

[Tom Rambaut]

Nice little bird - love the colours on the head and the hint of the crest. Bird stands out with those colours and the BG colours. TFS

[Satish Ranadive]

Tony,
Gorgeous image.Beautiful composition with excellent lights and nice perch.
Love the pose of bird,lovely bright colors,details and BG.

Regards,
Satish.

[Ken Watkins]

Tony,

This is a wonderful, image that is considerably more difficult than people might imagine,got to love that eye

[Ofer Levy]

Nice pose and colours. Eye looks a bit funny to me - I assume you have selectively "doctored" it, brightening it up? From my experience the eyes of most Kingfishers are dark and have no visible bright iris as seen in here.
Just saw Ken's image of the same species and as I suspected the eye is dark. This practice of "doctoring" eyes is not great IMHO as it changes the way things really look. Unfortunately when done by moderators - it sets bad example to less experienced photographers.

[Randy Stout]

Tony:

Lovely colors, I like the delicate, spiny perch, sharp on the head and the f/10 helped getting that long bill in focus.
If you use Color Efex Pro, might be able to tease out a bit more detail in the whites. So much of the apparent detail has to do with the light angle as well, of
course.
That is one negative I see with fill flash on the loons, it tends to flatten the apparent detail in whites by being straight on illumination.

Cheers

Randy

[Ken Watkins]

Ofer,

Just checked on the uploaded image and a few others, I think you are right as it takes a lot of selective lightening to open up the eye as bright as this. Unless of course it maybe caused by the use of flash, as I rarely if ever use it I cannot make a valid comparison.

[PhilCook]

Well I'm nothing short of envious, and that eye is excellent imo...great use of fill flash

[Stu Bowie]

Hi Tony, I was wondering when you were going to post one of your many Malachite images you captured. Well placed in the frame, good alert pose, and the colours look good. I like how the perch meanders through the bottom of the frame, and the MK pops from the water BG nicely.

[arash_hazeghi]

excellent pose details and a nice dark BG. I agree with Ofer the pupil looks a bit unnatural given the real-life bird

very nice work TFS

[Vivaldo Damilano]

Fantastic image of these beautiful birds. I agree with eye comments. Good BKGD as well TFS.

[Jim Crosswell]

I like the pose, perch, sharpness and BG. Well done Tony!

[Tony Whitehead]

Thanks for the comments guys. Attached is a 100% crop from the RAW to show what a Malachite iris looks like in direct sunlight. Editing involved removing the flash highlight and second sun highlight, burning in the pupil a little to remove the flash reflection from the retina and dodging the dark reflection of the pallisade fence on the left which was causing the sharp line at 10 o'clock. Resizing and sharpening for web has altered to appearance somewhat. I am on a learning curve with D800 images as when reducing them to web res so much info is discarded the appearance is very disappointing. Randy's comments about detail in the whites illustrates this well - in the full res image individual feather fibres are visible in the white throat but all just turns to mush on reducing and resampling. I have tried doing it stepwise rather than in one hit but seems no better. Any suggestion?

[Ofer Levy]

Thanks for showing the crop Tony. It looks to me that the unsually bright iris is actually a reflection of something bright - maybe even the reeds. Pleased to see you don't belong to the "eye doctors"....

[arash_hazeghi]

Thanks for the comments guys. Attached is a 100% crop from the RAW to show what a Malachite iris looks like in direct sunlight. Editing involved removing the flash highlight and second sun highlight, burning in the pupil a little to remove the flash reflection from the retina and dodging the dark reflection of the pallisade fence on the left which was causing the sharp line at 10 o'clock. Resizing and sharpening for web has altered to appearance somewhat. I am on a learning curve with D800 images as when reducing them to web res so much info is discarded the appearance is very disappointing. Randy's comments about detail in the whites illustrates this well - in the full res image individual feather fibres are visible in the white throat but all just turns to mush on reducing and resampling. I have tried doing it stepwise rather than in one hit but seems no better. Any suggestion?

if you are using CS6 make sure you use "bicubic" not "bicubic auto" which is the default. it messes up with super large files like the ones from D800.

[Tony Whitehead]

if you are using CS6 make sure you use "bicubic" not "bicubic auto" which is the default. it messes up with super large files like the ones from D800.

Thanks Arash - appreciate the advice.