Wood Duck (m)

[Joseph Przybyla]

I captured this image at Lake Morton in Lakeland, Florida. Comments and critique welcomed and appreciated. Thank you for viewing.

Nikon D500
Nikon 500mm PF, camera and lens supported by a Oben carbon fiber monopod with a Wimberly MonoGimbal head
1/3200 F/5.6 Matrix Metering EV +1 ISO 1800 Auto 1 WB, image captured at 500mm (750mm 35mm Equivalent)
Post processed in Lightroom Classic, Photoshop CC 2022 and Topaz Denoise AI
Cropped for composition and presentation

[Dorian Anderson]

Killer lighting, Joe! However, looks as though you might have underexposed because there is a lot of noise (and lack of detail) on the back and tail. The face hold up OK, and you look to have put the focus point directly on the eye, so that's good.
Otherwise I could see a touch of CCW rotation to level the image.

[Joseph Przybyla]

Killer lighting, Joe! However, looks as though you might have underexposed because there is a lot of noise (and lack of detail) on the back and tail. The face hold up OK, and you look to have put the focus point directly on the eye, so that's good.
Otherwise I could see a touch of CCW rotation to level the image.

Hi Dorian, thank you for viewing and commenting, much appreciated. I think what you are seeing or not seeing on the body and darker tones is because the feathers are wet. The bird was submerging it's body, then surfacing prior to the image capture. Wet feathers don't sharpen well. Thanks again for commenting,..

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi Joe ... nice overall image of a beautiful duck .
Nice soft light and the colors are making this image for me .
Interesting explanation of the obvious grainy structure in the feathers ... might be special for the species .

TFS Andreas

[Randy Stout]

Joe:

You have to love wood ducks, such beautiful creatures. To my eye the image looks a bit washed out. I would try adding some blacks to it to give it a bit more bite. Agree about the rotation.

Having shot with a D500 since its release, I do find that its noise performance can be an issue if the image is underexposed when taken. I appreciate that wet feathers don't show as much detail, but might revisit your noise reduction on this one and see if you can tease out a bit more detail without over sharpening . Which of the Topaz noise protocols did you end up using on this one?

Cheers

Randy

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Joe, love the water and the soft ripples, but have to agree the darks of the plumage do look odd, overall the image just appears thin in tonal range. When you view at actual size 100% (1920px, 5.48 in) the sharpness is improved compare to the uploaded version. I was thinking in addition to some adjustments you could adjust the Tonal Curve and add some dehire, but this does impact on noise/under exposed images.

You have to love wood ducks

Agree an underrated subject.

TFS
Steve

[Joseph Przybyla]

Thanks everyone for viewing, commenting and suggesting improvements, much appreciated. I went back to the beginning with the master/original image and worked up the image again with your suggestions in mind. In answer to Randy's question of which noise setting I used in Topaz as I remember I had used the Standard setting, this time I used Severe Noise. This image was taken very early morning, low light. A slower shutter speed may have offered better results but the bird was swimming and I would rather have a sharp image to work with rather than a image with motion blur regardless of the ISO and noise. Here is the image reprocessed.