Northern Cardinal quiet reflection

[Greg Payne]

This cardinal was coming to drink at a water hole in south Texas.

Canon 7D
300 f4 lens plus 1.4 series II teleconverter
1/60 at 5.6
ISO 800
tripod

Small adjustments in lightroom to shadows and white balance. 60% tonal contrast and detail extractor on bird in photoshop.

[Carolyn Arnesen]

This is lovely. I like the centered comp and muted colors.

[David Kenny]

Greg,

The cardinal does not appear sharp to me. Could it have suffered some quality loss when you sized for web? From my experience shooting cardinals they are always twitching or moving about so they need a faster shutter speed. I also have the 7D and it does seem to get noisy at higher ISO so it is a balancing act. The low vantage point works well with the reflection but I don't feel the vignette adds anything here. Do you have the original with no vignette you could post?

[Greg Payne]

This was an older file but I found it.

He's not as sharp as I would like for sure. Very grey morning. Part of the vignette was the natural light.

Here's a quick repost

[Diane Miller]

The composition with the reflection is very nice, and I like the natural light vignette effect. It is frustrating to get enough SS at a decent ISO and aperture. You did well for the conditions, but it would be nice if the bird were sharper. With a setup it is often possible to use flash to give just a little more sharpness. This is a case where a little careful sharpening on the JPEG could help, but not much you can do for the master file.

I'm curious if you muted the colors to control over-saturated reds? That's been discussed in several threads here recently. But maybe the soft light prevented that problem.

[David Kenny]

greg,

hope you don't mind I tried something quick in PS to enhance the reflection. I did a duplicate layer, adjusted the brightness and contrast and then I erased it from the upper portion to create a sort of gradient (there are other ways of doing this). I also used the burn tool to darken some of the brighter areas. Just an idea I wanted to try. Only took about 2 minutes. I may have gone a little too dark.

- Dave

[Greg Payne]

Thanks for the replies. This is a file from 18 months ago I've printed for a couple of folks and wanted to play with. I sure would shoot this differently today to help with sharpness. It has printed well though. The colors are muted due to early grey light.

[Greg Payne]

David, I think if I split the difference between us I might have something pretty cool.

[David Kenny]

I just looked at it on a different monitor. Way too dark. But I think you get the Idea.