American Avocet

[Indranil Sircar]

I took this Avocet earlier this week. The settings were -

40D, Sigma 50-500mm @ 191mm handheld
1/1600 sec, f/8 Mode: Av Metering: Evaluative Exp comp: +1/3 ISO: 400

Adjusted recovery/fill-light in ACR, saturation and selective color changes, bg nr and usm. All C&C welcome...

~ Indranil

[Jeff Cashdollar]

Nice shot, I like the extended wings. It looks a bit soft to me, you have plenty of shutter (1/1600). I am thinking, maybe you did not use enough of the 500MM FL (only using 191MM) and this forced a large crop? That combined with HH and noise reduction s/w can smooth images out and retard detail.

The +1/3, I assume it was cloudy. Was the histogram shifted right but no clips, pretty bird. Where do you find these guys?

[Indranil Sircar]

Jeff, Thanks. This was taken at Don Edwards NWR in S.F. Bay Area. This is about 10% crop. The bird was flying fairly close and I had to pull my lens back. I went back and redid the ACR convert again reducing the fill-light and here is a repost...

[Dave Barnes]

The repost looks a lot sharper than the original.
I like the angle of flight captured.

[Jeff Cashdollar]

OK, wow, he was that close. A vertical would have been an option to use more FL and get more bird in the frame. Always be ready to switch to a V for BIF, the repost is good. The Avocet is a beautiful bird, wish we had them in TN, nice job, beautiful picture.