Mangrove Background

[Arthur Morris]

This Sandwich Tern was photographed on my great hand held morning at Fort DeSoto back in September. Canon 500mm f/4L IS II with the 1.4X III TC and the EOS-1D X. ISO 400. 1/1600 secl at f/6.3. Central sensor/Rear Focus Surround AI Servo AF. If you have a 1D X, you might want to check out my 1D X AF Guide here. AF surround helped keep accurate focus on the bird even with the background other than sky.

Don't be shy; all comments welcome.

[gail bisson]

Well done to get this bird tack sharp on an incoming flight path against a busy BG.
I wish for a bit more detail in the belly and tail feathers.
Dropped feet and the yellow tip look good,
Gail

[Shawn Zierman]

The aspects of the flight pose...seperation of the bill and feet from the body, tail flare, details-a-plenty...are rocking.
Miss some sparkle in the eye, but the life of the pose more than compensates for it. The background is the weak spot
of the image in my opinion...too splotchy to not be visually distracting...also, there is some totally black sliver in the
lower right hand corner of the image...?

[David Salem]

Great landing pose on the Tern. I like the BG . If you shot allot of terns you will find yourself gravitating to shots that arent solid blue sky. Heads is sharp and like the raised coverts. Lacking a bit in detail due to wing and body position. Nice Work .

[Stu Bowie]

Hi Artie, this is really sharp, and just love the detail on his right primaries. Nicely separated from the BG, and just love the hint of yellow on the tip of his bill.

[Vivaldo Damilano]

Excellent Artie, I like the landing pose and the bird pops nicely. Good exposured whites, pin sharp and also like the yellow on the bill tip TFS.

[Ákos Lumnitzer]

The whites are so bright they almost hurt, yet I know they would be perfectly exposed. Lovely pose and I love its yellow bill tip!

[Jonathan Ashton]

Beautifully captured Artie, the focus is perfect. I have some slight reservations over the whites on the front edge of the wings and to some extend those close to the right eye. It could be the angle of the light but they look almost pure white with little to no detail, I would suggest consider toning down if practicable. Possibly they have gone brighter during conversion to jpeg???

[Arthur Morris]

Thanks all. I did struggle with the WHITEs here. I have sent the RAW file to Arash for help :). David Salem makes and excellent point on the BKGR. I actually like it. Good catch by Shawn--the canvas was rotated and I missed filling in a spot.

BTW, Arash and I are almost done with our joint effort: a DPP RAW Conversion Guide. Details on the blog and in a bulletin coming very soon. ACR totally destroys 1D X images and I have learned that there are lots of advantages to doing the RAW conversions in DPP.....