Blue-gray Tanager, Costa Rica

[Dan Brown]

Another capture from our great trip to Costa Rica with Greg Basco and Doug Brown. Shot at Rancho Naturalista where this species was numerous. Cropped and PP'ed in ACR and CS3.

Camera Model: NIKON D300
Shutter speed: 1/1000 sec
Aperture: 5.6
Exposure mode: Manual
Flash: Optional,TTL
Metering mode: Multi-segment
ISO: 400
Lens: VR 80-400mm f/4.5-5.6D
Focal length: 400mm
Focal length: 600mm (in 35mm film)
VR Image Stabilization: On
AF mode: AF-C

[Ed Cordes]

I like pose with the head turn toward you. The detail seems good. The Blue OOF splotches are a little distracting. Especially the one right under the tail.

[Jory Griesman]

Very nicely exposed, sharp tanager. Good head position. I like the background, but would perhaps lighten it a bit, and clone out the purple blotches (?flowers). I like the perch, but suspect others would suggest toning it down. I like the diagonal orientation of the perch, and wouldn't change the overall comp - if you move the bird/perch to the left, I think there'd be too much empty green space to the right. Well done.

Jory

[Fabs Forns]

Very interesting bird, nice colors. Agree the unfortunate purple flower would be best removed. Over sharpened in the head, how big a crop is this?

[Ramon M. Casares]

IMHO the perch is a bit large for the species, but still, the soft light, pose, head anlge, detail, colors, BG and comp are simply stunning! Congratulations!

[Dan Brown]

Very interesting bird, nice colors. Agree the unfortunate purple flower would be best removed. Over sharpened in the head, how big a crop is this?

Fabs, this is about 50% cropped. I have a bit of trouble with sharpening for the forum here. As I have mentioned before, my images seem to look good and sharp prior to previewing my posts and then the preview looks unsharp, so I revisit the jpeg, sharpen more and then post. In the process, the sharpening seems to get out of hand? I also sometimes loose saturation with the post and have to redo and up the sat for posting? I can't understand why the resized jpegs seem to loose sharpeness and sat upon posting? Any ideas?

Here is a redo with the flowers removed and the head sharpening backed off a bit.

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Fabs, this is about 50% cropped. I have a bit of trouble with sharpening for the forum here. As I have mentioned before, my images seem to look good and sharp prior to previewing my posts and then the preview looks unsharp, so I revisit the jpeg, sharpen more and then post. In the process, the sharpening seems to get out of hand? I also sometimes loose saturation with the post and have to redo and up the sat for posting? I can't understand why the resized jpegs seem to loose sharpeness and sat upon posting? Any ideas?

Here is a redo with the flowers removed and the head sharpening backed off a bit.

What browser do you use, Firefox? If it looks less sharp you can reset it by going to view > zoom > reset. As for saturation, did you convert to sRGB? If so, maybe you need to recalibrate your monitor.

The repost looks better, BTW.

[Doug Brown]

Nice pose and a beautiful green BG. Agree with the tips from the other folks.