Silver-bill in evening light

[Sanjeev Aurangabadkar]

Camera	Canon EOS 7D
Exposure	0.002 sec (1/500)
Aperture	f/8.0
Focal Length	400 mm
ISO Speed	400
Exposure Bias	0 EV

[Grace Scalzo]

pretty light, and that's a cute look back pose that you are getting from the bird. I wish your shooting angle was lower. How much of a crop? I see courseness in the feathers.

[Sanjeev Aurangabadkar]

Thanks Grace, it's not a big crop, maybe 20% or so. I did apply smart sharpening to the bird. Maybe that could be the reason.
Cheers
Sanjeev

[Bob Pelkey]

I have been mutilating images for years. A tweak of sharpening technique has been made countless times. I am most recently content with Smart Sharpen: Basic, Default, 60-110%, 0.7 pix, lens blur, depending on the image (cropped). I wouldn't hesitate to back off a bit with the crop to get a little better sharpness. The shutter speed is slow enough to possibly explain why you don't have sharp detail to the base of the tail feathers.