Prairie Chicken

[David Salem]

My good buddy Glenn and I made a trip last spring to the plains of the central US to look for Prairie Chickens displaying on the lek. A lek is a piece of ground, usually flat and on a small rise, that these grouse use to court, display and mate.
We were very fortunate to hit the weather right in-between storms and we had 2 great full days of shooting. These guys are a ton of fun to shoot as they are very active on the lek as they display and fight for the right to mate with the females.
This is a beautiful adult male displaying in all his glory. He is probably the dominant male of this lek of grouse and was busy all morning chasing other males and herding his hens. It was a great experience and if you ever get the chance to see these birds, I highly suggest it!!

D5---850mm---f7.1---ss1/2000th---ISO640---Handheld from Jeep@7:45am---25% crop

Thanks as always for looking and for your input. I appreciate it.

David

[arash_hazeghi]

pretty cool frame of this chicken, love the feather details

[David Roach]

Best view I've seen in great light of one of these beauties. Those "eye brows" just slay me. TFS

[Ian McLachlan]

Marvellous ,and the feather de ail and sheen on them could hardly be more brilliant. Did you take your D850 because its hard to imagine any more detail or IQ than this?

[David Salem]

Thanks guys! Glad you like it.

[David Salem]

Marvellous ,and the feather de ail and sheen on them could hardly be more brilliant. Did you take your D850 because its hard to imagine any more detail or IQ than this?

Thanks Ian.

Good question. Yes I had my D850 on my lap at the time.

I have used this frame many times to show some friends and clients that once you are really close to a subject, there is very little, if any precivable difference between the D5 and the D850, even though the 850 has more than double the pixels.
That is only if we are composing a subject for viewing similar to the frame shown here. Pretty much a normal comp with the bird having adequate room around it. Now if we were going for a close composition of the head with all of its details and textures, then the 850 would deffinitly shine with all of those extra pixels.
I used both bodies during this shoot but because we were very close, probably 20ft to 50ft, and there was a lot of fighting and flight action, I mainly shot with the faster D5.

Thanks again

[dankearl]

Excellent Dave, great looking bird and pose.
Looking forward to some fight photos!

[Geoffrey Montagu]

Great looking bird, captured with beautiful details, David.


Geoffrey




http://500px.com/geoffreymontagu

[Bill Dix]

Spectacular shot of this guy in full breeding plumage. I'd never seen that degree of facial detail in them. Thanks for sharing.

[William Dickson]

Wow what great detail...Lovely pose, POV and colours throughout. Outstanding sharpness all over the bird. I notice a wee bit posterisation on the beige colours at the top..Are you seeing this on your monitor David..I am getting it quite a bit on my own images, I think we have similar monitors.

Will

[John Mack]

Killer all around. Love the detail on this one.

[David Salem]

Wow what great detail...Lovely pose, POV and colours throughout. Outstanding sharpness all over the bird. I notice a wee bit posterisation on the beige colours at the top..Are you seeing this on your monitor David..I am getting it quite a bit on my own images, I think we have similar monitors.

Will

Thanks again everyone!

William,

No I don't see any real posterized areas on my monitor, even in this low resolution file. If I sit 8 inches from my screen and try to find some, I can, but there aren't any obvious areas like I would normally see in a BG that was pixilated. The master TIFF is obviously smooth as a babies bottom :)
I have the same monitor as you have, the IMAC 5K monitor so I'm not sure why you are seeing it in this image and in your own images? Let's see if any other IMACers see any real pixilation when viewing this image.

Hope this helps

[gail bisson]

What a gorgeous frame.
The POV, IQ, great subject, behavior and light make this a winner.
I have a 5K iMac and I do not see any posterization.
Gail

[Colin Driscoll]

What a great shot of such a comical looking bird. Awesome light and detail.

[Paul Burdett]

Great to see your images David...another winner...great detail, colours and composition. Cheers.

[William Dickson]

Thanks again everyone!

William,

No I don't see any real posterized areas on my monitor, even in this low resolution file. If I sit 8 inches from my screen and try to find some, I can, but there aren't any obvious areas like I would normally see in a BG that was pixilated. The master TIFF is obviously smooth as a babies bottom :)
I have the same monitor as you have, the IMAC 5K monitor so I'm not sure why you are seeing it in this image and in your own images? Let's see if any other IMACers see any real pixilation when viewing this image.

Hope this helps

Hi David...thanks for getting back to me. When i look at your image on my windows laptop, I cannot see any posterisation, only see it slightly on the iMac. I have no idea what is causing that. Like yours, my master TIFFS are ok, only when I change to jpeg I see it on the iMac, not all, but some of them.

Will

[David Salem]

William,

Probably just certain
images and nothing is wrong.

Thanks again everyone.