Atlantic puffin

[P-A. Fortin]

A few of you might remember my post of last week, a Northern Gannet, in which I pretty much explained how hopeless my birds in flight photography was and how this lucky shot of the Gannet gave me a push to keep on trying.

Well I did. And not on the easiest subject. Although they were flying a rather regular path so it was a bit of cheating, but still quite challenging. Not perfect, but I am quite satisified.

Canon 7D, 400mm f/5.6, 1/1600, f/5.6, ISO 800, handheld.
Slight crop for comp. NR on the background. Nik Tonal Contrast (3%) and Detail Extractor (3%) on the bird.

[Tobie Schalkwyk]

Well, now you can say that you've got another beautiful shot, P.A! Love the facial colors and soft BG!

Just wondering if you're not going to get a little more feather detail if you close the aperture to at least 7.1 and sacrifice a tad of ss and/or (rather) ISO? Or leave it at 5.6 and raise your shutter speed and ISO a tad (I reckon that lens should produce excellent quality at 5.6)? If you take a pic where you don't need to crop much, a little higher ISO's shouldn't penalise your IQ significantly.

To sum up: you can feel chuffed with your progress as this is a keeper for sure!

[David Salem]

Looking good. Nice capture of this colorful subject. I like the pose and the HA looks good too. The techs look perfect with nice detail in both the dark and light.
Sure wish it wasnt in front of the rock but what can you do. Looks like it could go for a bit more sharpening. More shutter speed is needed to stop the action and 1/1600 is the very minimum I would use for IF photography. Better to increase SS and decrease aperture for IF stuff as most of the time the subject is far enough away that the DOF isnt going to make too much difference, but freezing the bird is going to produce sharper overall images. Well done

[Marina Scarr]

Exposure in whites and blacks looks good here and you have some nice feather details. Agree on a tad more sharpening. Agree with David on your SS but understand with the 7D and 400L you were limited and I think you did very well!

[Daniel Cadieux]

You did very well P-A. I agree it is unfortunate those large BG rocks crept into the frame at ime of capture, but the subject looks great: well exposed, good details, and good pose. Keep it up!

[arash_hazeghi]

love these handsome bird,, nice exp. for both whites and blacks , agree about the BG, a bit soft as a result of slow SS

TFS

[P-A. Fortin]

Thanks all for your comments. You are right about the image needing more sharpening: I actually forgot to sharpen the image before saving the jpg...