Puffin in flight

[Alex Becker]

Hi all,

Another puffin shot from the Farne Islands. I liked the '3D' look of this one. In post, slight crop, raised shadows and lowered highlights a little to help deal with harsher light, added some canvas to fly into, NR on the BG. Eye slightly lifted.

Camera: Nikon D500
Lens: 200-500mm f/5.6 at 330mm
Specs: 1/3200 ISO 640 f/6.3

Thanks for looking and commenting on prior posts!
Alex

[gail bisson]

Nice BG and head is nice and sharp. Good incoming position.
I am not crazy about the wing position. Good DOF here with the foot pretty sharp.
Gail

[Bill Dix]

So tough to get these bullets in flight, especially if they are coming at you. Head is sharp, and the bird stands out well against the lovely background. As noted, light and wing position less than ideal, but well done to get a sharp capture.

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Alex, light looks harsh highlighted in the whites, but you did well. Think you could have afforded some extra DoF f/8 as you had plenty of ISO and retaining the SS. The NR applied appears a bit hefty to me, surprised you needed it at ISO640, I would peg it back a bit, looks a bit natural IMHO. If you reduce the amount or even zero it, then the motion of the wing may look better, I think the two clash here???? Did you try o recover the shadow areas in the RH wing as viewed?

Glad you got them flying, as Bill said 'they are like speeding bullets'.

TFS
Steve

[Alex Becker]

Thanks all for commenting! These guys really are bullets and so tough but I think these have been my favorite subjects to photograph to date. Just really fun to have pretty much constant action with them. Good point Steve re: upping the DOF as I often find myself settling in f/6.3 and not pushing it more and bringing down NR to help separate the wing motion more. I didn't really need NR here but I've been applying it to pretty much all my backgrounds as part of my WF following along with Arash and Artie's professional processing guide. I haven't tried any selective lifting of the shadows on that wing but I think worth a go to see if I can even the lighting just a bit more. I think as is I just did ~+15 or so on the shadows in LR.

Thanks again all,

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Alex, I would hold off all NR, below 1000 on your D500, you should not need it and you may find you can go even further, but I would need to ask my Nikon guy.

Re the shadows, I thought you had on the wing, if you haven't lifted them, don't, unless you think it works as you have the raw.