say.. Bill..
if the bird brings it own TRIPOD.. does that mean you dont need one? its funny how that reed gives it such a look of symetry.. I wondered if you should work that into a square crop to enchance that? but then Im not usually the best on giving crop advice.... (unless your talking corn or beans.. Im from Iowa originally!)
Hi Kenn, Not sure if a reed or tail feather spike but it does seem to steady this a bit. Cropping, composition not my best in bag quality so whatever the standard opinion on this is I will do. Bird was about 35-40 yards away and pushed my 400 to the max to get this. I have been using the new sRAW image on 40D and trying to get a feel for mit but the image size seems to be small so will probably abandon it soon. I liked this when I processed it but othes may not. Comments welcomed
The whites look good here and I like the relatively wide crop and pose. I only wish for more head turn toward you. If you wanted to experiment with a different crop, you could crop a bit off the top and right.
I don't think the whites are blown, in fact I know they are not, but cause I peeked at the pixels. They are pretty close in the JPG version, but you could recover them. The red channel in what we see as white is blown out over the brighter areas of the bird, but there is still detail in the other two channels.
If you using RAW, you can get a good bit back, but even if the original was JPG there is still a lot that can be done.
Some channel mixing of the G & B channels with output to R will get some detail back.
Curves and levels will get some back as well.
I see what you mean about the three points of contact, but for me the rear feather, reed, or whatever really bugs me for some reason.
I think the warm glow of early morning light is too red in this case so I tried this:
The framing and the inclusion of the whole reflection are positives, but you needed to move well to the right to better parallel the subject... Or wait for the bird to change its position relative to your position. Them's the facts as I see them.
later and love, artie
ps: It is a breeding plume.
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