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Staring Contest
Yesterday, I bought the Canon 1.4x III extender, having noticed that when photographing birds/wildlife, I pretty much always had to crop quite heavily, certainly also due to a lack of knowledge and time to approach wild animals closer.
To do some testing, the fauna near our home offers a few rather cute possibilities, to be more exact, ducklings in various stages of their early life.
This one I feel came out pretty nice, with a low perspective and a rather interesting pose/look from one of the older ducklings. Some of the other photos also are quite nice/cute, you can check these in my flickr feed if you like.
Camera 7D Mark II with Canon EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM and Canon Extender 1.4x III. Settings:
f/8 (maximum with this combo)
560 mm (again max)
1/640s (lowest I wanted to go hand-held at a rather unnatural stance trying to get really down to the ground)
ISO 1600 (necessary due to overcast sky and therefore not much available light)
Had this been BIF photography, I would have gotten into trouble with this light, as the 7D2 can certainly also do ISO 3200 or more, but I try to avoid that.
Post processing in Lightroom CC, toning down the highlights and raising the shadows a bit, also bit more contrast and saturation as the natural light provided for a very flat picture OOC.
Cropping from originally horizontal to vertical as I felt that better served the duckling's pose. No further cropping beyond that, thanks to the TC.
I hope some of you like the photo, comments and critique appreciated as always of course.
Regards,
Robert
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You must be happy with your new kit. This is a very nice portrait! Your techs have been well explained. Thank you! Love the bird and BG. Nice colours too. I would be tempted to see what a bigger crop looks like.
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Classic cute pose with the water droplets being a lovely added touch!! I think this is sharper than the others you posted. How do they compare at 100%? From the wake it looks like he was swimming toward you, so good work on following focus. And tonalities look great!
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Thank you both for your kind comments, Glennie and Diane. I am especially glad to hear you like the tonalities and colours. Going from a completely flat RAW in LR to something more interesting always has the potential to go too far.
Diane, I am happy how it turned out, and that I indeed managed to follow focus with the duckling swimming towards me. The TC of course makes the AF a bit slower, but the subject also larger in the viewfinder, so a bit easier to keep the AF point where it should be.
The image is indeed quite sharp, it's not the sharpest from that day though. Sharpest one would be this here (larger version on flickr):
Glennie, here's an overview of my initial crop for this photo:
So, to get a bigger crop, I have to go horizontal. Which I tried of course. 
That would be 72% of the original vs. 44% for the vertical.
I still think the vertical crop makes it a bit more interesting, but both versions have their merit, and it's always interesting to see all options.
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I like both crops. If it were mine, I'd remove a little more off the top o the vertical one, but not a big deal. Hope to see more of these cute little guys!
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Love the tight vertical crop, Robert! I, too, would like the top on the vertical cropped out a little bit; but no big deal. It's a matter of preference, and you have the full prerogative on that especially with such cute picture.
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