Sulphur-crested Cockatoo

[Glenn Pure]

Lots of these around where I live (and in many parts of Australia). This one was photographed at a nature reserve not far from home where the birds used to be fed by the rangers. This one had been taking advantage of that and was perched next to the feeder and close to a viewing deck, enabling a close, tight shot. This was one of the first shots I took with the 100-400mm mark II lens after I'd upgraded from the old version of the same lens late in 2016. Crop is about 3/4 of the frame area (yes, the bird was very close)

As always, thank you for looking and for any comments you are kind enough to share.

Technical: Canon 80D with EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM at 400mm handheld. Manual exposure 1/1000 sec, f8, ISO 1000. Processed in Canon DPP 4 (digital lens optimiser @ 50, sharpness = 3, crop, lighting adjustments, NR) then exported 16 bit TIFF to Photoshop Elements with Neat Image NR plugin. Modest NR to bird and stronger NR to background. Bird only sharpened in PSE (Sharpness tool, remove Gaussian Blur) after final size reduction.

[Isaac Grant]

Details look very nice. Man you must've been close. Was it possible to get an angle where part of the bird was not in shadow? Also the area on the bottom of the frame below the beack looks a little hot and it is the only area where you can not see any feather details. It kind of stands out as the rest looks so good.

[Geoffrey Montagu]

Outrageous detail, Glenn. It's great to see the the feather structure this close. Well done.

Geoffrey




http://500px.com/geoffreymontagu

[Glenn Pure]

Thanks Isaac and Geoffrey.

Was it possible to get an angle where part of the bird was not in shadow? Also the area on the bottom of the frame below the beack looks a little hot and it is the only area where you can not see any feather details. It kind of stands out as the rest looks so good.

Isaac, it wasn't possible to avoid the shadows but I personally don't mind them. As for the lower parts, I agree. There is good detail there, I just haven't brought it out enough. Below is a repost and hope I haven't gone too far now in that part. Some other minor lighting fiddles while I was at it.

[Dorian Anderson]

Incredible feather detail, almost like macro. Probably good the bird was partially shaded or you would have lost much of it.

[Isaac Grant]

I like the original more. The repost seems a little too gray. I might even reduce the blacks in the whites a touch on the original to make it whiter.

[Daniel Cadieux]

Fantastic details, and I like the close crop. I'd probably like it even better with a bit more at right, but OK as is too. Just a bit more dof to get the edge of the bill sharp would have been perfect, but it is not very critical in this case. Such a fun image that had me studying it for a while.

[Glenn Pure]

I like the original more. The repost seems a little too gray. I might even reduce the blacks in the whites a touch on the original to make it whiter.

On reviewing, I agree Isaac. These white subjects can be hard to render (my excuse anyway). Also, I've cropped with more on the right as per Daniel's suggestion. I think this is looking better all round now, so thank you.