The little Squirt

[Jim Poor]

I'm curious how you all find this one. I go back and forth on the saturation, though this is pretty much straight from the camera with just an Auto Tone in LR along with a bit of lens vignette removal (left some in, but I might take it out the rest of the way).

Selective sharpening on the water drops and my "kill shadows / kill highlights" actions wrap up the processing.

I wish I had caught him without the nictitating membrane over most of the eye.

Camera Make: NIKON CORPORATION
Camera Model: NIKON D3
Image Date: 2008:03:21 09:13:43
Flash Used: No
Focal Length: 600.0mm (35mm equivalent: 600mm)
Exposure Time: 0.0005 s (1/2000)
Aperture: f/4.0
ISO equiv: 200
White Balance: Auto
Metering Mode: Matrix
Exposure: aperture priority (semi-auto)
Comment: (C)JIM_POOR

[Don Lacy]

The colors look good and getting him with the Puffer is a nice bonus only wish you had more DOF to get the Puffer in focus.

[Randy Stout]

Jim:

Great breeding colors in the lores. The eye actually looks pretty good, I don't find it objectionable. Nice handling of the whites. I think the saturation looks a bit overdone, even though that is how the camera recorded it.

What does bother me is the lack of DOF. The neck in particular has halo effect which I find distracting, and I wish the puffer was in focus also (per Dons comment)

Good to see you back.

Randy

[David Thomasson]

Very nice. It's possible to "cheat" sharpen the neckline using the clone tool. Of course that won't recover details in the feathers. I also toned down the background a little and ran Noiseware. And fixed a couple of hot pixels in the upper right quadrant.

[Jim Poor]

Thanks gang.

I won't truly be back until I manage to post a picture with 2009 as the capture date, but I'm working my way up to getting into the field again soon.

I was actually just doing the same thing for the neck. I'll have to take a look at some noise reduction at full size to see what I think. Those "hot pixels" were water drops, but they were probably far enough away from the rest that I should remove them.

[Kris Mortensen]

Awesome shot! Love the colors! On my monitor, I see some noise that was probably brought up by sharpening around the droplets. But an overall great shot...love the repost!

[Fabs Forns]

I remember this one very well, Estero with the whole gang :)

I bet you I must have some of those, unedited.

I like David's repost.

[Jim Poor]

I didn't do a very good job of labeling the locations on that trip. It was all I could do to keep up with just downloading images :D Is there a record somewhere of which locations where on which days?

This one was on 3/21.

I remember this one very well, Estero with the whole gang :)

I bet you I must have some of those, unedited.

I like David's repost.