Wood Duck - close up

[Terry Johnson]

This image was taken a couple of days ago at Crystal Springs Gardens. Overcast..gray day.

Nikon D800
Nikon 70-200 with 2.0X teleconverter @ 400mm
F5.6
1/180
ISO-800
A-Priority
hand held

Comments welcome...Terry Johnson

[Don Nelson]

Nicely done head portrait.
consider doing a little noise reduction in the background.
Also, it could use a round of Nik tonal contrast.
I also smudged over the two bright circles (clone stamp.40%)- one to right of chest, and the other above the back.
No additional sharpening applied
here's an after photo: (and looks like it was saved at 1200 pixels wide instead of the original post at 900....


at 900 wide (added after original post): (Terry - post your pictures bigger than 900 wide:

[Randy Stout]

Terry:

The soft light gave you a nice display of the subtle colors, often lost in brighter light. I like the repeating curves of the forehead and breast, back of head.

Don's work is a nice improvement.

I might suggest that hand holding this camera/lens combo at such a slow shutter speed makes it difficult to get the maximum performance out of it. It is quite intolerant of movement, and think that using a higher ISO to allow faster shutter speed will yield a higher keeper rate.


Cheers

Randy

[Bill Jobes]

Love the crop on this one, Terry -- and the colors and patterns are a treat to see.

I'm guessing there wasn't much light, if Aperture Priority at 800 ISO only gave you 1/180 shutter speed.

I agree with Randy that being handheld, that puts you on the edge of blur.

Nonetheless, I think you succeeded very nicely with this one.

[Daniel Cadieux]

I love the crop too, and I also like how round this fella looks. Nice colours and a nice smooth BG to make this guy pop. Not sure if use flash or not, but I feel that a bit of fill-flash would have done wonders here.