Blue Tit

[William Dickson]

Canon 1DX
f/4 500mm with 1.4
f/6.3
1/1000
ISO 2500

I got several shots of this guy as he balanced on top of the perch. Glad he arrived, as the loch was very quiet. Sat in my hide for several hours waiting for the Great Crested Grebes to show, but they never did. hopefully next time.

Will

[Randy Stout]

Will:

Nice catchlight, the buds add a lot to an otherwise pretty ordinary perch. soft background.

For my taste he is slightly over sharpened, a bit "crunchy" to my eyes.

Glad someone showed up for you!

Cheers

Randy

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Will, can only echo randy's thoughts, is this a big crop?

TFS
Steve

[William Dickson]

Thanks for the comments guys. Hi Steve it wasn't that a big crop. Here is a repost with less USM.

[William Dickson]

And here is the original

Will

[Steve Kaluski]

Will, in an ideal world you needed to be a fraction closer in the set-up, albeit you were after the Grebes. Providing the Exposure was correct I would go with a Landscape crop, reducing the crop and hopefully retaining more IQ. This was based on your image above in pane 5. Looks like its time to pop the body into Canon for a service to remove some Dust bunnies DO NOT clean the sensor yourself .

[William Dickson]

Thanks for that Steve. Much appreciated mate. How long is the camera away for, during service I don't think I could part with it for too long.

Will

[Steve Kaluski]

Will, I will drop you a PM.

As a Platinum Member and I pay 'Rush' two hours, but... PM on it's way now. I would use Canon, as many years ago I did use a canon pro Service, not again.

[Daniel Cadieux]

Will, I personally consider this a big crop! I know the 1DX has amazing IQ, but I would definitely try to get the bird bigger in the frame. I do like the pose and the smoothed out BG of your processing.

[annmpacheco]

Hi Will, late to the party, but its a lovely image and a bit crunchy, Im in that league at times but keep working at it. How did you smooth out the BG? thanks!

[William Dickson]

Thanks Dan. Thanks Ann, I used Viveza 2 for the BG. I used the structure slider and moved it to the left -20. I don't ever use this tool, but thought I would try it out on this image. Hope this helps.

Will

[Jonathan Ashton]

Will I agree it looked oversharpened and I would suggest warming up the colour temp a little WDYT?

[William Dickson]

Thanks Jon, yes I think I will try that, when I rework the RAW. I opened this one with DPP, still early stages for me, with this software, but I'm getting there

Will

[Jim Crosswell]

I can see why you are tempted to go vertical here but I do like Steve's take in pane #6. Would like to see this bird one day. Nice image Will.

[David Salem]

Great looking frame William. I too think it's a moderately large crop for the subject especially. Steve's repost is about right. Nice pose, perch and background. Well done

[William Dickson]

Thanks for that David.

Will