Barnegat Dunlin

[Bill Dix]

D90; 80-400 VR @ 400mm. ISO 800. f/8 @ 1/400s. Matrix metering @ +0.3 EV. HH.

Barnegat jetty about a month ago. Cropped maybe 30%. C&C welcome and appreciated.

[Arthur Morris]

Nicely done and very sharp. I love the spotlit head. I believe that the rufous-fringed tertials (???) indicate that this is a first winter bird. My only wish is that the head was perfectly square to the back of the camera. That is usually best even for slightly over the shoulder poses.

A bit of bill clean-up would work if you are OK with that.

[Doug Brown]

I like the illumination of the head. The eye looks sharp, but the plumage looks a little coarse. Nice ocean BG.

[Bill Dix]

Nicely done and very sharp. I love the spotlit head. I believe that the rufous-fringed tertials (???) indicate that this is a first winter bird. My only wish is that the head was perfectly square to the back of the camera. That is usually best even for slightly over the shoulder poses.

A bit of bill clean-up would work if you are OK with that.

Thank you Artie. I wondered about the coloration of the tertials (?) (and/or subscapular?) -- it seemed it might be the last vestiges of juvenile plumage going into his first winter. Yes, I should have cleaned up the bill before posting -- I'll do that to the master file. I took a number of shots of this fellow, including one I like that is pure profile and square to the sensor plane, but it didn't show the back plumage as well. I appreciate the comments.

[Bill Dix]

I like the illumination of the head. The eye looks sharp, but the plumage looks a little coarse. Nice ocean BG.

Thanks Doug. Could you explain what you mean by coarse plumage? Over or under sharpened? Lack of critical focus? Or what? Thanks for looking.

[Gal Shon]

lovely, I like the BG, the light on the head and Comp.
On my monitor there's a halo around the bird and oversharping on the eye.

[Axel Hildebrandt]

I like the angle, light, BG and eye contact. I don't mind the head angle as is. The head looks a bit oversharpened on my monitor and the back lacks some detail, did you run NR on it?

[Bill Dix]

Thank you Gal and Axel. I don't see the halo on my screen, but there could be a bit of oversharpening of the eye. Axel, this was processed last month and I don't remember exactly what I did to it beyond my normal workflow. I never run Denoise on the bird, but occasionally I run a light pass of Topaz DeJpeg which can (but doesn't always) remove jpeg artifacts without affecting detail. I may have done that here - perhaps that caused some softening? When I get time I'll go back and process another of the frames in the series and see if I keep more detail. Thanks for the comments.

[Gal - on second look, I do see a bit of a halo around the bill of the posted version, but not on in my original jpeg file.]

[DustinFinn]

I really love this as posted. the head and body angle are sweet and that background is awesome...