Valentine's Day! Special

[vishaljadhav]

Clicked this some time back
Shot with Nikon D7000 + Nikkor 800 f5.6 AIS manual focus
F/8, 1/250 , ISO 800



C & C welcome

[Karl Egressy]

Nice image, Vishal. Love the soft light and eye contact with both. Sharpness looks good of both.
Since the reflection is not perfect, you could have taken about 300 mm off of the bottom and added just about the same to the top, IMO.

[gail bisson]

Amazing sharpness of far bird considering the aperture and the 800 mm lens.
I love the fluffed up duck on the right and the light on him. What kind of duck is this? Which is the male and the female?
I wish there was a bit of space between the bill and the far ducks head.
Water ripples are lovely. I like the comp as is but agree that Karl's idea is one worth exploring,
Gail

[Randy Stout]

Vishal:

Not a lens we see freq. on the site. Obviously can work very well. Agree about the comp. option mentioned.

Nice job keeping 1400mm equivalent focal length steady at that shutter speed.

Cheers

Randy

[girisholeti]

Very lovely frame. One of the ducks I was longing to photograph from quite sometime. No luck yet. Agree with more space on the top.

[HadiAnsari]

Vishal. Love the soft light and eye contact with both. Sharpness looks good of both

[Gary Kinard]

Very very nice shot and just picture in general...

[vishaljadhav]

Amazing sharpness of far bird considering the aperture and the 800 mm lens.
I love the fluffed up duck on the right and the light on him. What kind of duck is this? Which is the male and the female?
I wish there was a bit of space between the bill and the far ducks head.
Water ripples are lovely. I like the comp as is but agree that Karl's idea is one worth exploring,
Gail

These are the Ruddy Shelducks, they breed in the far North of India upto Mongolia and travel in the winters down to our areas and even go south of india
The plumage you find is more of a non breeding plumage of the duck as Feb is more of a coat thats completly off, they get back the colour end March when the return migration starts

[vishaljadhav]

Vishal:

Not a lens we see freq. on the site. Obviously can work very well. Agree about the comp. option mentioned.

Nice job keeping 1400mm equivalent focal length steady at that shutter speed.

Cheers

Randy

Randy,
This was a lens i was using for nearly 1.5 years for shooting mainly videos with the DSLR, i loved it,
Made very few images with it and this one is one of them
the equipment was on a Video Tripod so not much of a issue keeping it steady , since the lens it self if 6.5 KGs :)
I will try and cut the frame again to see how it work, i processed this last year in Feb and posted it as is , i will try and reprocess it to see if i can get a better result.
Thanks for the suggestions

[Faraaz Abdool]

Vishal - excellent image here! I love the gentle light, and the catchlight in both ducks' eyes. 6.5kgs huh! Would like to see more images made with this beast!

[vishaljadhav]

Here is the re-edited image

Re-edited the Nikon Raw exactly with a 1 year gap , let me know if this works better

[Faraaz Abdool]

RP is perfect, Vishal!!

[PhilCook]

Very nice, particularly the repost, my only wish would be for slightly deeper dof to bring both ducks in equal focus.

I have a freiend who has the 800 f5.6 MF as well, the shots can be amazing

[Diane Miller]

I have to be the iconoclast here and say how much I like the original crop! The reflection has enough "weight" (and elegance) to more than hold it's own. If anything, I'd hope to be able to include just a bit more at the bottom so the reflection wasn't cut off, but it's not cut off enough to be a problem.

There is nothing happening at the top of the image, so why include all that empty space?