slaty breasted rail

[Loong-Tat Wong]

Hi
This image was made of a juvenile slaty breasted rail as it was foraging in the early morning light.Would appreciate your kind C and Cs. Thanks a lot!

Cheers,
Loong

Image details:
Canon 40d 600mm f4 TC 1.4 Manual exp ISO 640 f5.6 1/125s manual flash 1/16 tripod

[Harshad Barve]

What a beautiful image , loved the looks BG, HA & details
TFS

[Ashutosh Sinha]

I am not an expert on post-processing but there is something weird here. I think you have tried to blur the background and it has spilled over on the main image. Other than that very nice image. Rails are so shy birds that they are very difficult to photograph. Cangrats on your capture.

[Loong-Tat Wong]

Hi
Thanks for your comments.
Actually due to the aperture of f5.6,only the head of the rail is really in focus and the rest of it like the BG looks a little OOF.

Cheers,
Loong

[Ákos Lumnitzer]

I like it, but a more side-on view would have been far more pleasing IMHO. Your plane of focus is severely limited this way. Thanks for sharing.

[Arthur Morris]

I love the image. Those huge sharp eyes are fabulous. I respectfully disagree with Ashutosh; the d-o-f is as expected. I would love to see a bit of the legs.

Loongwong, thakns for your membership support. Please let us know how you focused here. Is this a crop?

Do your friends call you Loong? Do you have a nickname?

[Loong-Tat Wong]

Hi Mr Morris
Thank you for your kind words. Appreciate them very much.My friends call me Loong :)
The image has about 30% cropped away to improve the composition and to make the image,I was sprawled on the ground with my tripod splayed open to the max.The rail was probably about 20 feet away on slightly higher ground. With my set up I can only use the central focussing point and I placed it on the rail's head and fired a few shots.I think the fact that I was slightly lower and with the large aperture used,resulted in the image as it is;OOF in the foreground and BG.
Thanks again for your interest.

Cheers,
Loong

[Ilija Dukovski]

Any photo of a rail is worth congratulating, this one is so good. The eyes here are unreal.
The bird has so much character, very nice.

[Stu Bowie]

My, what big eyes you have. Great close up Loong, and Im fine with the DOF. I like how the FG fades to complete OOF. Well captured.

[Ashutosh Sinha]

Thanks for the explanation. When I first saw it my thought was that at least the grass that falls in the plane of focus should be sharp but I don't see any grass in focus here. Probably it is just because where they are with respect to the plane of focus.