Hooded Mergansers

[Bill Dix]

There's a long back story to this one, but suffice it to say that when the guy in the red shirt spooked the birds I was stalking, I wasn't prepared when they suddenly reappeared from around a bend in the pond. I grabbed a half-dozen quick frames, but this was the only one in which the birds weren't overlapped. In fact, I really like the placement of the birds in the frame, and relative to one another. (This is almost full-frame except for a little rotation and crop to pano.) But I wasn't sure about the IQ -- possibly from DOF issues? I attempted an OOTB post using a filter to create an "oil painting" look, but I kept coming back to this to see what else I could do with it. As Arash has pointed out more than once, no amount of sharpening can produce fine detail when it doesn't exist in the camera. So I've done my best to bring out the detail that's there, while trying not to oversharpen. I'd like to know what you think.

D7200, 500f4 + 1.4 TC, ISO 1000, 1/2000s @ f/7.1 manual. Gitzo and Mongoose.

[adrian dancy]

The female birds look a bit over sharpened. The image would have worked better if all birds were a bit further away and the bird in front was lagging behind. These group shots are never easy.
The background habitat is superb so worth more visits.

[gail bisson]

I think this is one of those "almost" shots that haunts all of us at some time. It would have been wonderful to get 3 sharp birds in flight with good separation and wing position.
But...the birds look very coarse and lack detail from the extra sharpening.
Gail

[dankearl]

At web size this works for me, probably not great at a large size, but i like it.

[arash_hazeghi]

Hi Bill,

great to see three of them in one frame with favorable wing position too but to my eye none of them looks sharp enough.

TFS

[Stu Bowie]

Hi Bill, great inflight trio capture here, and looks like your focus point was on the Male ( middle one? ) Having said that, with your focal length, at F/7.1, you arent going get the other two in the DOF range to have sharp.

[Bill Dix]

Thanks everyone. Of course I knew all of that, but it's sometimes helpful to hear it from you guys just to keep me honest. The drake is certainly the sharpest (or should I say least soft) of the trio, so I've played with the image by using the Content Aware Fill to evict the hen and juvie. Still not tack sharp perhaps, but at least it doesn't have the distraction of the two softer birds. Any thoughts?