This was taken this morning at the local bird sanctuary. 50d, 500 f/4 at f/4, 1/640, EC+1, ISO400.
I cropped a bit and cooled the water off a bit. I am not sure if there were some twigs of grasses on the right side or not but it seems a bit different from the balance of bg.
Dave
Superb sharpness shows of the texture beautifully against the smooth water, Dave. Reflection of the head looks a little strange with a dark edge and some pale flecks.
Once the head smudge is removed this will be PMP = pretty much perfect. Love the SH and the concentric rings and the fact that you have the bird back in the frame.
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Dave, the water texture takes it to a different level. feeling very envious about the BG. perfect shooting angle for reflection shot. Only thing that concerns me a bit is the head. It looks a bit noisy....or it might be sharpness....or it just might be my ignorance about this species( not knowing the feather texture) :-)
I thought I would repost with the reflection cleaned up. I used a slightly different sharpening ratio to see if "noise" is gone.
Again tks for the comments.
It was an overcast day and the water was quite bright, particulary upper left so I wanted to tone it down.
Instead of using a quick mask to separate the bird and reflection from bg, I tried the magnetic lasso tool.
I suspect the issue with success is more practice.