Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoo

[Colin Driscoll]

A male (left bird) and two females flying into the morning sun. Slow, floating flyers.
None of them critically sharp, eye AF point on the near shoulder of the center bird, but posting anyway!
Plenty from the burst of 50 with AF point on one of the eyes but this was the best wing positions.
From my front deck, BG is lake.
R5 EF 600 III 1.4x III 840mm HH
1/4000 f5.6 iso1600 manual exp
About 25% crop DxO raw CCPS 2021

[John Mack]

If the birds had more room between them this would have been great.

[Paul Burdett]

Hi Colin. Good effort here, catching the three of them! I like the flight poses. I think you may have overdone the sharpening? as the halos are pretty pronounced, especially on the bird on the left. The beaks on the right two birds look blown out on my monitor.

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi Colin , nice triple you have captured .
A bit more separation between them would have been better , IMHO.
Personally I think the contrast is a bit strong and is masking detail on both ends of the histogram. Color personal taste ... so leave that to you .
Strong white halos all around the birds .... well well , halo free sharpening seems to be a miracle at times , but you're not alone .
Do not see a single benefit in using the DXO piece of software .

TFS Andreas

[Colin Driscoll]

Andreas, unfortunately you are correct, that halo originated in DxO.
I tried to make a silk purse from a sow's ear because I liked the group and was annoyed that I hadn't managed to produce a critically sharp image in such good light with a near-ish slow moving target.

[Dorian Anderson]

Yeah, more separation would have helped this image a lot. And the birds are so small in the frame that I don't think it's necessary to hammer them with sharpening (halos as others have mentioned). There's a lot of empty space here which suggests a heavy crop. Ideally, you would have put more pixels on the birds (i.e been closer), captured more feather detail, and been able to do less processing.

[Arthur Morris]

Love the bird and the crisp, vibrant colors. ou should have shot the middle bird!

with love, artie