Relaxing on a tree branch

[Oscar Zangroniz]

This guy was resting atop a branch in his habitat yesterday at the zoo.

Nikon D300, Sigma 300mm w/1.4tc, 420mm, F4, 1/1600, ISO 400, Aperture Priority, Exposure Com -0.67

[Julie Kenward]

Excellent portrait, Oscar! You've caught quite the face there and you did an excellent job of exposing the dark fur with those light blue eyes. You also got a wide variety of textures in this one and that adds so much interest to an image!

My only suggestion is to run noise reduction on the BG or cut back on the crop. You definitely have something funky going on back there...not sure if it's noise or jpeg artifacts but they could use some smoothing out.

[Alfred Forns]

This Bear gets around Oscar :) Excellent pose and feel !!! Would also select the eyes and darken the pupils !!! Big Congrats !!!

[Gus Cobos]

Oscar,
This is a great pose, very well done. The color rendition id good and you have details in the blacks...I would suggest to run noise reduction on the background...good capture. congrats...:cool:

[Jackie Schuknecht]

Great exposure Oscar. The blacks look great. I would just use the blur tool to soften out the BG a bit. What gorgeous eyes!

[Alberto Oria]

Very well done Oscar, very peaceful, detailed, good color.

[Gus Hallgren]

Oscar: Lovely capture, you caught a great expression.

Thanks for sharing

Uncle Gus :)

[Gus Hallgren]

Hi Oscar: I know I have old eyes, use a Toshiba Laptop, however, monitor test at bottom of page show that I can see a difference in every sector. I must be blind because I didn't see any obvious noise in background.

For kicks, I QM BG only and ran in through Noiseware Pro. Can you see any difference? Maybe a bit.

Uncle Gus

[Joerg Rockenberger]

I must have a setup similar to Uncle Gus as I also don't see much noise in the background. But I thought that the bear's right eye is sharper than the left. Given that the bear seems to be at rest you could have traded off shutter speed (1/1600) for DOF (F4.0).

Nice image - congrats! JR

[Desmond Chan]

I don't see much noise either. But I have a high level of noise tolerance ;)

Just lovely pic, Oscar !

[Richard Waas]

Very Nice Oscar. Great Comp. and I love the eyes....... No noise on my monitor.

[Gus Hallgren]

Does the eye look any better? Uncle Gus

[Nicki Gwynn Jones]

Hi Oscar,
What a beautiful portrait - he looks as if he is ready for a long nap!! Very nicely done.
Regards,
Nicki
PS I don't see noise either...

[denise ippolito]

Hi Oscar,

Another great shot. I love the pose
.
Regards,

denise

[Gail Spitler]

Oscar
Love the bear. Agree with the suggestions. There seem to be areas of green just along the edge of the head near both ears (or where the ears ought to be) - are they natural?
Well done
Gail

[Harold Davis]

some really nice detail there, buddy, for a third party lens!!! like the compo here. having a hard time seeing the noise in the bg, but am on the ole laptop. reposts look good, does anyone see a slight blue color cast on the bear?