This is a Turquoise-Browed Motmot from a boat on the Gran Tarcoles River, CR. We had a wonderful time on the boat with many bird species to choose from. Thank you Doug and Greg for a wonderful trip!
Canon 40D
Canon 100-400 f4.5-5.6 @ f13.0
ISO 800
-1/3 exposure compensation - no flash
handheld
Hi Kristin - gorgeous bird and what a tail - not sure if you have the details correct above - F13??? If this is correct would have opened up a whole lot more to blur that BG and increase your shutter speed.
Ha looks good and like the eye contact - tough one compositionally because of that tail.
Lance, I checked my data on the file and yes it is f13. This was a pair of Motmots we photographed from a boat with the background some distance away...The light was not great at the time. I am still learning so please keep me on my toes... :)
Hi Kristin, nice job here. As for the DOF, you could probably have blurred the BG with a wider aperture, but that particular situation was very tough with no real way to get a clean BG! The boat was only so manueverable and the BG was close and tangled! I shot at f5.6 and still have stuff in the BG that is distracting. But Lance is right, the wider aperture would work better.
Hi Kristin - :) the wider aperture would have given you a faster shutter speed - and a higher hit rate of sharp images - that said this does look sharp. Just wanted to bring it to your attention.
What a beautiful bird, nice shot and a hard one to crop with the tail length. I noticed ISO=800, did you apply any NR - maybe a tad more sharpening. Al say's to sharpen until it's too much and then backdown. Anyway, lovely image and I cannot get over the great colors on this baby.
Hi Kristin you came up with a great one here !!! Sure do like it !!
Only suggestion is the aperture. With busy bg is best to be closer to wide open for minimizing the bg detail. Here you can still do so by making a layer, blurring and brushing away what you don't want with a layer mask. Best to do just a little to make it look like it was all in camera.
Either way I like the image a lot, you nailed the exposure and like the composition !!!! s
Thank you all for your comments. I am still at the point with my photography where I have to "think" about everything. Sometimes I get stuck "in a rut" and forget to change things to make a better image.
Photoshop is still a challenge for me as well. I hope it becomes more second nature soon! Thank you for all your help. :)
Kristin
Hi, Kristin. I remember this -- though it was a good look at this beautiful bird, it was a tough shooting situation. Exposure and sharpness look great. I agree with all of the comments so far that opening up your aperture would have helped with the background and would have allowed you to use a lower ISO. That said, the shooting on that boat was fast and furious, and the lighting literally changed minute to minute so I know that it was easy to lose track of what settings you were on.
Turquoise-Browed Motmot
