Bicolored Hawk (A. bicolor) Costa Rica

[Nelson Mena Alfaro]

Hi everybody heres my favorite hawk i found the nest few km from my house critics and comments are welcome
efix
canon 60 + 100-400 L is usm
iso 500
400mm @ f/11
1/20 sec, tripode n cable
few clone spots on photoshop, noise reduction to the background, sharpen and levels to the bird
image can be seen here with a little more quality
http://www.flickr.com/photos/8027302...ream/lightbox/

[Faraaz Abdool]

Great shot Nelson, however the BG is a bit distracting with all those spots of light. I understand that these may be totally unavoidable though! Maybe if you opened up to f/7.1 or so, even 6.3 the BG may have been smoothed a bit. I'm guessing you shot at f/11 to get the entire bird in focus?

[Daniel Cadieux]

Well its a beauty and I can see why it is your favorite hawk. Good vertical comp overall...you could place the subject a bit lower in the frame. It may be also worthwhile to patch up the various white spots in the BG. The clone and patch tools would work well, or content aware. I'm finding a bit of a green cast too, easy fix by adding a touch of magenta in "Color Balance". Love the view of the talon, and the eye looks great. I'd recommend opening up the paerture to give you more SS and to help with softening the BG, but you still got a nice result here.

[Nelson Mena Alfaro]

thansk for comments, faraaz i also have some photos at f/5.6, but bird little soft, 100-400 lens not sharp at all :)

[Marina Scarr]

This is quite a nice image. Your bird's pose is quite nice. I think if you took a little bit of space off of the bottom and added a little to the top it would look as though your bird were lower in the frame.

I have a 100-400 that I use a lot and am very happy with the sharpness but I hear there are some copies that aren't as sharp. This should be quite sharp at F11. I would do a little bit more sharpening of the bird if it were mine.

[Nelson Mena Alfaro]

This is quite a nice image. Your bird's pose is quite nice. I think if you took a little bit of space off of the bottom and added a little to the top it would look as though your bird were lower in the frame.

I have a 100-400 that I use a lot and am very happy with the sharpness but I hear there are some copies that aren't as sharp. This should be quite sharp at F11. I would do a little bit more sharpening of the bird if it were mine.

Thanks marina, i dont think lens is a copy, when i say soft i mean not sharp like 300 2.8 at 15 meters, but i think thats too obvious hehehe price + quality thanks for comments again (: