Great stare on this fellow, I like the tight composition, it's well exposed. Looks like the light angle wasn't favorable which caused that big shadow down the bird's neck.
Merv, I have stared at this image for a few minutes. Lots to like, including the details in and around the eye, including the droplets, the foot showing, the perky pose, and that great water surrounding the bird.
You didn't mention if you cropped this iamge, but I think that a looser composition would be more pleasing, especially on the bottom and right. Assuming that this bird was close to you, there is no way that it would all fall within your depth of field from head to toe, but in my images, I try hard to get the head and beak all in sharp focus. Looking at your settings, and given the capabilities of your camera, I would have increased my Iso to 800 (four clicks) and then increased your f-stop to 6.3 (four clicks). You could push the ISO even higher if you wanted to with this camera and then stop down even more. The other parameter that you could adjust is the shutter speed, unless the birds that you were photographing were flying, you could give up some shutter speed for more depth of field. Hope that this makes sense.
I love the look on this fella, looks so menacing! Good job on the whites, and I do like the view down the back that we have here. I do agree a looser comp would have been better, and Grace has also offered some nice tech advice.
Thanks for posting this, Merv. In my opinion, this is a much stronger image. Love the water...it gives the viewer that something extra, and my complaints out the bill in your original post are nearly solved in this one. Goes to show that depth of field is a function of distance to subject.
Shy Albatross (Thalassarche cauta)
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