Here's a Collared Sparrowhawk in early sunlight getting its feathers just right before hunting for breakfast. I have had difficulty agreeing with myself on the color balance for this one, the wing looks about right but the breast looks a bit blue. I have actually settled on what came out of the camera with auto WB. I'd be interested in your thoughts. Thanks.
50D, 100-400 @ 400, ev +1.33, 1/250, f9, iso auto @ 320, 430EXII -1.33
I think your WB is about right. The light was well off to your right, which throws the breast into shadow, which is cooler. The near wing looks good, and in fact when I tweaked the color balance, I kept coming back towards your original.
Nice that you can see the one eye, often a challenge with preening photos.
I might consider lightening the shadows a bit if you haven't already.
Agree with the comments above. Killer pose but the sharpest focus is on the breast. Thus the eye is soft, and it looks as if there may be some motion blur on the head as well. Joe's wish for more eye contact is an important one.
Here from ABP II are my two rules for preening birds:
1-the bird's head needs to be parallel to the imaging sensor.
2-the bird's eye needs to be clearly visible.
Sorry Charley
ps: Amazing views and details of the breast and the spread tail.
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Good comments from above, I would add that the angle is a bit steep, and the sky a bit too bright, and cyan looking. You might try adding some blue in selective color, and reducing the brightness in the cyan channel.
first thing I noticed was the motion blur on the head. interesting pose though and overall detail is good...
never seen this bird so can't comment on authenticity of the colours as shown.
Thanks for the excellent comments. I think that the motion blur on the head might be ghosting from the flash because the bird's movement wasn't all that fast. In retrospect maybe I could have switched to Tv and accepted a higher ISO.