Eastern Spinebill

[Glenn Pure]

The closest thing Australia has to a hummingbird. This small honeyeater is often seen hovering at flowers as pictured here. I was in two minds about posting this as the lighting was very difficult and I had a hard time get a good result from processing, being unable to extract much from the dark parts of the bird. I hope it doesn't look too HDR. I did, however, like the detail visible in the front wing and the vertical hover. The flower is an Australian native Grevillea species and was photographed at the Australian National Botanic Gardens last summer. Cropped from horizontal. This is most of the frame vertically.

I will be taking a break from BPN for a while to get on with travel and other projects but will be visiting regularly and may be back next year. Thank you to all who viewed and particularly commented on my work. I have appreciated it and learnt much.

As usual, hope you enjoy and as always, welcome any comments and views you are kind enough to share.

Technical: Canon 80D with EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM Mk II at 400mm handheld. Manual exposure 1/2000 sec, f7.1, ISO 1600. Processed in Canon DPP 4 (digital lens optimiser @ 50, sharpness = 2.5, crop, lighting adjustments, reduced luminance NR) then exported 16 bit TIFF to Photoshop Elements with Neat Image NR plugin. Modest NR to bird and stronger NR to background. Sharpened in PSE (Sharpness tool, remove Gaussian Blur, 0.3 or 0.4 pixels at 50%: processed some time ago and can't remember exactly) after final size reduction.

[kevin Hice]

Glenn it looks hot in places that take away from the overall photo . Leaves and top of the head. I know you said the lighting was difficult. Looks soft on the head and wish you had a little more head angle I like the overall photo and always enjoyed your posts. Looking forward to you coming back and appreciate your critiques of my photos.

[Geoff Newhouse]

Well this is a first for me seeing this bird and it is cool to see a larger bird behaving just like our hummingbirds...I actually didn't know Australia didn't have hummers.

As per the photo..the only thing that detracts for me is the bright area on the crown and the shadowed eye/head area. Otherwise I really like the overall image design and the behaviour captured. I personally would clone out the messy OOF stuff in the lower right and make it smooth like the lower left...I'm okay with the upper left white bokeh balls. Considering this is an 80D shot at 1600ISO, I'm impressed with your PP and how you have managed the sharpness/NR balance...I hated the 80D sensor above 800ISO so you are better at PP than me!!

TFS
Geoff

[Glenn Pure]

...Considering this is an 80D shot at 1600ISO, I'm impressed with your PP and how you have managed the sharpness/NR balance...I hated the 80D sensor above 800ISO so you are better at PP than me!!

Hi Geoff, thanks for your comments but I doubt I'm better at PP but possibly just using different tools. Neat Image software has been used for NR. If you haven't tried this, then give it a go. It makes a huge difference due to the ability to preserve detail while treating noise. There are other products like this such as Topaz Denoise and some lesser known ones. Neat Image and Topaz both have free trial versions. I sometimes drop the ISO below 1600 if the light is good but it's generally not necessary most of the time to get good results.

[Colin Driscoll]

Allowing for the above critiques, it is a lovely shot of the bird.

[arash_hazeghi]

I like the feeding behavior captured and the nice flowers and the BG, too bad about the light angle

TFS

[Paul Burdett]

Hi Glenn. I'm a little more forgiving than some here (although in an ideal situation having no 'hot spots", "messy" areas would be better) and think this is an excellent image...sharp in the head area and motion the wings. Enjoy your travel and projects...look forward to seeing more of your work. I'm off to Tasmania in September...including two nights at Inala, where I'm doing a guided bird walk...hoping to get those endemic species! Cheers.