Welcome Swallow Quest #3

[Duncan Groenewald]

I was virtually on the water pointing up to get this shot. I had no idea if I would even get any in the frame as that was pretty tricky while hanging upside-down looking through the viewfinder at 90 degrees and they are only about two - three feet above the water surface most of the time.

Reminds me of a C160 cargo plane coming in to land, fat belly and all, nothing like the jet they usually resemble. Quite remarkable how they adapt their shape.

I thought I could see some banding/posterisation in the jpg file - there is nothing I could see in the 16 bit TIFF file - it there a way to prevent that from happening when converting to jpg ?

This is nearly full frame (I think about 6500px x 4500px).

1/8000s iso4000 f8

A1 100-400GM



I was hoping for some better eye contact but it was tough getting anything in the frame from that position so I was pretty pleased to get this one as it is approaching the same detail as static images of similar sized birds - although I am sure some of you could extract more from the file than I have.

Definitely will have to figure out a better way to shoot from that position to be able to do so for extended periods.

Comments welcome as always.

[Jay Ing]

Really really sweet frame. Bkg is great and I like the angle a lot. I shot a lot of swallows this year so I can appreciate the challenges here. Very well done.

[William Dickson]

I think this is your best one yet Duncan.....The BG colours look real good against the bird...Lovely details on the bird and sharp....I know they are so difficult to capture.....but I am sure you will agree that wings fully up or down, would take this up a few notches....

Well done..

Will

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi Duncan ... another very cool swallow image .
The pose might not be as good as the previous postings , but I could greatly live with it if this would be mine .
You did the best job so far in terms processing , IMHO , specially you nailed the sharpening and the fine details rendering .
Tones are looking better as well in my book , not that drastic in contrast as some of the previous postings ... well for for sure a matter of taste at time s.

So far I am not really excited ( in all of your postings ) about the color rendering you choose , but no big deal as color is many times down to different tastes .

Cool image ....

TFS Andreas

[arash_hazeghi]

nice capture of this bullet, great details + sharpness. the light was not your nest friend here, I think you had to do quite a bit of highlight/shadow adjustment which worked well but has made the swallow look a bit unnatural, a bit like those HDR landscape shots. but all else is great , did I mention the pretty BG?

TFS

[Duncan Groenewald]

nice capture of this bullet, great details + sharpness. the light was not your nest friend here, I think you had to do quite a bit of highlight/shadow adjustment which worked well but has made the swallow look a bit unnatural, a bit like those HDR landscape shots. but all else is great , did I mention the pretty BG?

TFS

I'll be the first to admit to struggling with post processing although on this one I think the light was considerably better than on most of the others. In retrospect I was probably a bit heavy handed in lifting the shadows.

The original frame below.

[Duncan Groenewald]

How do the colours look on this one ? The sharpening doesn't look right to me now but ignore that for the moment.

Maybe a bit too dark for me still.

[Daniel Cadieux]

IMO the version in pane #7 is the best one, but if mine Ièd tone down the brightest top area. I gotta say that I am impressed with the original frame (pane #6) on how you got the bird in a great spot and size in the frame - you have a lot of pixels on the subject to work with. Sweet BG.

[John Mack]

The last repost is my favorite one. Not easy to get these eratic little birds.

[Duncan Groenewald]

Thanks for the feedback everyone.