I just took delivery this morning of Robert O’Toole’s APTATS CD and the first tutorial reminded me of a Peruvian Pelican I photographed on a very windy day off the Pacific coast of the island of Chiloe, Chile.
20D, 400mm f/4.0 DO at f/4.0, 1/2000 and ISO 100.
I appreciate that I should have reduced the aperture probably by increasing the ISO but in that wind I really needed a fast speed and I don't think that the DOF has suffered too much.
I then cropped the image slightly to move the bird a bit to the right and eliminate some less interesting foreground water. This left me with the head and wing of a second Pelican on the right margin which I eliminated using Robert O'Toole's Quick Mask Object Removal technique. I thought is was very effective and great fun. The CD is worth every penny (and I'm a Scot!). I hope you like the result.
Must have been fantastic to be there. I'd be tempted to crop tighter, emphasizing the line of the wave more by cropping a bit of the right, bottom and top. (my 2 cents). From my screen, I'm not sure if the focus has missed the pelican Arthur. Cheers. Dave
I love the placement of the bird in the frame and in the wave. David and Hillebrand have nailed the problems, the biggest of which is the focus. Thanks for the APTATS plug
later and love, artie
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Love the comp, Arther. I don't mind that the bird is centered, because the wave is as much the subject as the pellie. I don't know how you went about sharpening the image, but if you sharpened the whole image you might go back to that point and leave the rest of the image alone but lasso the pelican and sharpen it individually to bring it more in tune with the focus on the wave.
In windy weather with the 20D, no matter what the lens, you had a very difficult al servo focus challenge. I got some nice BIF with that body, but I had a lot more I tossed into the trash than I kept because of focus issues in cases like yours.