AZURE KINGFISHER

[Ian McLachlan]

This rather beautiful kingfisher lives mostly in the sub tropics ,North East Australia and New Guinea. However there are a few in Southern Australia ,very few, and I have never seen on till someone on e-birds said they had seen one in a creek 80 miles from our son's farm.they mostly live in the shade in small secluded creeks and so did these few. in. One family I guess. I was pleased to have found them but as they are always up late because the sun doesn't get to the water in these low lying creeks till about 8.30 am even in summer sO .there ain't much time for the good light .I was trying for a flight shot, thus the settings .and the habit seems of being half in and half out of the shade ,on purpose no doubt..
The background is mostly reflections in the clear fresh water of the creek which goes out to sea about 200 yards away.



A1
200/600@489mm
f6.3
iso 6400
hh
I think it might be a new bird to most i hope you enjoy it.

[Dorian Anderson]

This is certainly a beautiful bird in great light, but something is very wrong with the image quality. I don't know if it results from NR something else, but I'd take revisit the image to see if you can improve it.

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi Ian ... lovely looking KF .
Setting is good .
Agree with Dorian that the IQ is not that great .... might down to the difficult light at that location .
Colors are looking good basically , but the tones are looking not right , IMHO . Overall very flat and HL have no details .

TFS Andreas

[Daniel Cadieux]

Great scene and bird here! Thanks for the nice description of the location too. Yes, more work in processing would be worth it here, but looks like you likely have a good file to start with. Curious to know what was the shutter speed?

[Ian McLachlan]

Thanks all .I made a bit of a mess of the processing.
Daniel this was at 1/4000th and iso 6400 on auto which I hate using but as the sun/shade was a problem I gave it a run.
The fuzzy stuff on the left is up against me and is dead bush .Anyway I am still fiddling with the a1 and this lens and will send along some flight shots which may be of some interest .To do so will be fun trying to find ithis bird again decent light.Thanks for your interest