Kingfisher and Autumn color

[Ted Willcox]

Subject: Belted Kingfisher [male]
Camera: EOS 1D Mark111
Lens: Canon 600 F4 IS
Shutter speed: 1/250
Aperture: F5.6
ISO: 1000
Evaluative metering
Expo Comp: -1 stop
Date: Oct 28/08
Time: 77am
This image was made in early morning shade. Taken from a blind. The bg color is a tupelo tree in autumn foliage. The exposure was set to -1 stop by highlight alert and histogram check to hold the whites. The camera was set on auto white balance, but the bird turned out very blue due to the shade. I change the white balance to shade in the raw conversion and refined it more in ps to get the bird back to a nice gray color. The background was very under exposed and therefore a little noisy,needed some noise reduction and brightening. For now, due to my limited knowledge in ps, this is the best I can do.

[Axel Hildebrandt]

I like the details, eye contact and the BG really is beautiful. These birds are hard to expose properly and you did well.

[Doug Brown]

Nice bird and a great BG. Thanks for the detailed explanation of the exposure and PS work. The post-processing of the bird looks good, as does the exposure. I might crop a bit off the right. And as much as I like the BG, I might desaturate it a little; it overpowers the bird. Very nice image!

[Mike Lentz]

Simply wonderful! I am okay with the image as it is. Congrats!

[Ted Willcox]

Thanks for the comments, their very much appreciated.
Ted

[Raymond Barlow]

very well done!

[Art Kornienko]

Nice job Ted, I love the crop and the bg.

[William Currie]

Hey Ted really nice photo like it alot Brad

[Ramon M. Casares]

Exposure, BG, colors, pose, detail sharpness, comp, all is just A+
Congratualitons!

[Arthur Morris]

William, Raymond, and Mike, please see the "great shot" sticky at the top of the Avian Forum. Thanks.

Ted, this is a wonderful image. Love the BKGR--the fall colors are exqiusite--and for some reason most good photos of this species are of the opposite sex. COMP could not be better.

I m quite confused by your -1 stop EXP COMP. Every MIII that I have every run across needs tons more light than other cameras do. The light here looks fairly soft. If I had the same situation I would have started at zero and checked for flashing highlights... By needlessly underexposing as I suspect you might have done here, you are creating noise in the entire photo, especially the darker areas of plumage.

Did you have flashing highlights at -2/3 stop???

Image quality on the face looks a bit suspect to me and the original underexposure might be the cause of that.