Pintail pair

[Kerry Perkins]

Pintail ducks captured at Bosque del Apache NWR on my recent trip.

1D4, EF400mm f/5.6L
Manual mode, f/5.6@1/2500 ISO 400 WB 5400K
AI Servo autofocus, hand-held no flash

[Mike Poole]

Lovely shot Kerry, very nice to see both the pair together, especially with the opposing wing positions. I find the background interesting and the angle they are flying is good. One minor technical nit from me is the whites on the drakes neck look a little hot (disclaimer - looking on my laptop at the moment!)

[Kerry Perkins]

Thanks Mike! The Firefox histogram tool shows no pixels over 200 in the image, so I think it's because there's very little detail in that white area of the neck.

[Loi Nguyen]

Hi Kerry, lovely pair in flight with excellent details and sharpness. What is in the BG? I find the BG is a little distracting, but there isn't anything you could do about it since you were already at f5.6. Loi


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[Kerry Perkins]

Hi Loi, the background is native bushes that grow along the canals at the refuge.

[Joseph Przybyla]

Hi Kerry, lovely image. The background is a tad distracting but as has been said nothing you could do about that. In spite of the background the birds stand out wonderfully, great color and detail. Thank you for sharing.

[Bill Dix]

Beautiful flight shot! I always love it when I can get the pair together in one frame, and here you've gotten them with great upstroke and downstroke wing positions. And a quacking drake. Well captured. If mine, I would be tempted to brighten the image just slightly (except for the white neck patch), and try a very slight blur on the bg. But you may not like to do that sort of thing. Fine image just as it is.

[Kerry Perkins]

Thanks for comments, much appreciated!

[Ian Cassell]

Kerry, I , for one, love that typical Bosque BG. The composition works well with perfect DOF and great contrasting wing positions. Love this one.

[gail bisson]

Well done Kerry! Pintails are my nemesis ducks and I have yet to get a nice image of one.
Love the way the ducks are separated from the BG.I would be tempted to blur the BG ever so slightly to keep the colors but to lessen the impact.
Agree with Bill 100% ,
Gail

[Daniel Cadieux]

I just photographed my first ever male Pintail today...and at point-blank range no less! No flight opportunities though, and from your image I see that I missed seeing the beautiful speculum. I love the alternate wing positions, and I am OK with the BG, although I see why others are not as much. Striking image.

[dankearl]

This is excellent, both sharp as can be and I like the BG!
Different and striking to me.....

[Diane Miller]

Thanks Mike! The Firefox histogram tool shows no pixels over 200 in the image, so I think it's because there's very little detail in that white area of the neck.

I'd rather trust PS's Color Sampler Tool for measuring tonal values. Zooming in and sampling four spots in the neck shows the brightest value I found as 253, 254, 251. Bright but definitely with some subtle detail. If you were concerned, there is probably information to be pulled out from that area in raw conversion.

Not sure why the FF plugin would show nothing over 200.

[Kerry Perkins]

Diane, you are right! I wasn't seeing the little line along the bottom of the histogram. PS does show some hot pixels, so I could revisit this image in the raw file.

Mike, you were right too. I processed this image on my laptop in my trailer in Socorro, and missed those hot pixels. Thanks to both of you.

[James Salywoda]

Gorgeous image Kerry nice and sharp well captured of one of my favorite duck species.