Little bee-eater - Selous Game Reserve

[Riaan Marais]

We found two Little bee-eaters hunting from a perch early one morning at one of the lakes in the reserve, they were sitting one behind the other, spoiling the background a bit, I waited till one flew of and got this image. Sharpened and cropped in PS

Nikon D90, Nikon 200-400mm F4 VR1, ISO400, SS 1/400 F4 - @380 mm

Critique & Comments welcome.

Riaan

[jack williamson]

A nice image of the bee-eater Riaan, the image is very noisy- maybe a large crop?

Jack

[Karl Egressy]

Nice image in nice light. However, the nise and the oversharpened look takes away a lot.
Maybe less sharpening and noise reduction in the background would do justice to the picture.

[Marina Scarr]

Lovely bird, great pose and terrific colors. Agree on needing noise reduction on the BG and the bird being oversharpened.

[Daniel Cadieux]

I like the bird, colours, perch, BG. I do agree the image has the look of a large crop though, but I see your zoom was actually pulled back to 380mm. Perhaps a rework would bring the IQ up on the image (especially noise and sharpness.

[Miguel Palaviccini]

Great composition, but I agree with the above comments. I don't expect the d90 to be as noisy at ISO 400 as you are showing. So my guess is a tight crop and a bit too much sharpening?

[Riaan Marais]

Thanks guys, I was a bit liberal with the sharpening, please see the repost.

[Marina Scarr]

While I can only view this from my cell phone, it looks considerably better than the OP!!!