Juvenile Loon

[Karen Forderer]

I captured this image last week. There was a family of four loons that let me get quite close in my kayak. In fact, quite a few times I had to back up. I was able to try out my new lens. This is the whole frame. Thanks for looking. Critique welcome.


D300s
300mm f4 + 1.4 teleconverter
1/1000 ss at f8
ISO 500
Taken at 5:00pm

[Loi Nguyen]

Karen, for a full frame, I would expect the image more sharp and more details around the head. The colors also seem a little flat and could use a little more contrast. Loi

[Cheryl Arena Molennor]

Nice and close shot of this guy. Yes more dof would have been great for the body and a little tweek on the contrast and color saturation would help it pop

[Karen Forderer]

Thanks for the replies. I do seem to be having trouble getting enough dof in some of my photos. I used Nik plugin for tonal contrast but I could try it stronger. I don't know if photographing handheld in a kayak affected the sharpness. Boats around me were making waves.

[Randy Stout]

Karen:

DOF on look back poses like this is always a challenge on a large bird like the loon. With that much focal length, that close, you just can't get the entire bird in focus with any reasonable f/stop.

I will sometimes take several shots, first right on the eye, and then focus the next shot slightly closer to me, to try and get the best distribution of available dof, but always keeping in mind that the eye/head has to be sharp for it to be an effective photo, imo.

The colors look very accurate as does the contrast. That is just the way these guys look at this stage of their life. The blacks under the tail are already blocked, so increased contrast will only aggravate that.

I do think you could sharpen the head a bit more.

Good shooting angle from the kayak.

I would normally consider that a fast enough shutter speed for a swimming bird, but if you had a lot of wave/wake action, you could consider pushing it up a bit.

I will push the ISO up to 800 on the D300 in a pinch, to give myself some more setting flexibility.

Cheers

Randy

[Grace Scalzo]

Randy covered all of my suggestions. Let me just say that you folks who can kayak and photograph at the same time are my heros. I have enough trouble doing either one by itself.

[Karen Forderer]

Thanks for your comments, Randy, I appreciate them. I will sharpen the head some more.