Slow time of year. Cold enough that all the lakes are frozen over. No ducks. There were a few eagles at the Mississippi lock and dams, but every time I could get there
it was overcast and the Army Corps of Engineers had the gates open on the inaccessible opposite side of the river. I've resorted to reviewing older images. I took this image
July 2017. I was surprised it came out as well as it did. I was just setting my tripod down first thing in the morning around a brush pile in the middle of a field. This bird
landed maybe 12 ft in front me before I could even check exposure settings. I hit the AF and wheeled the shutter speed down(easiest thing to adjust) as far as I could while
firing off a few frame before the bird bolted. I wasn't very confident about what I going to recover as the image was quite dark on the camera. The iso was set at 400 from the
previous day. I had to bump the exposure +2 in Adobe Camera Raw. I guess that means it was two stops underexposed? I did apply fairly heavy Topaz DeNoise to the
background but the bird had a lot less noise than I was expecting. Full frame image. I might have gotten a little carried away with sharpening for posting. Manual mode.
1/320s, f8, iso400
D500, 500mmF4VRII, TC-14EIII
Last edited by Jack Backs; 02-10-2019 at 12:06 PM.
A beautiful pose from one of my favorite warblers. Background is delicious. Yes, I think your sharpening got a little carried away; might be worth revisiting. Personal preference would be to take a bit off the bottom (preserving the talons), and perhaps stretching the canvas to give a little more room at top and left.
Everything that Bill wrote! Before reading his comments I thought the image was oversharpened and agree with his comp suggestions.
Nice image and worthy of a repost with above issues addressed,
Gail
Yupper. The bird is way over-crunched. I like everything else about the photo but for the light stuff in the URC. Also, do you have a bit more room above the bird?
with love, artie
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Reedit. I didn't have any more room above the bird but manufactured a little more. Very little sharpening on the original file and a straight size reduction for posting.