Alafia Banks Spoonbil

[Ken Lassman]

Alafia Banks, Tampa FL
With James Shadle on the Hooptie Deux

Sunrise standing in the water

Nikon D300
Nikon 300/2.8
ISO 800
f/5.6 @ 1/1600
Manual, Hand Held

[Harold Davis]

nice composition and i like the dual bg. did you run NR on the entire image. i'm going to reserve furthur comment til i know more.

[stuart wanuck]

nice image ken remember you gtting that one

[arash_hazeghi]

Nice incoming pose and nesting material, agree with Harold, looks like you ran lots of NR on the bird instead of BG.

[Lance Peters]

Hi Ken - bird looks quite smooth and lack of detail - NR could be the culprit??
Hope to see a repost - looks Good.

[WIlliam Maroldo]

Hi Ken. Was this image substantially underexposed? regards~Bill

[Thanaboon Jearkjirm]

Nice flight pose, the bird coming toward you with wing down position. The stick in the bill is a big plus. Agree about the softness on the bird.

[Ken Lassman]

Yes on NR and probably off on EXP....sent Raw file to Arash to re work....waiting to see results. Thanks

[Dave Mills]

Hi Ken, beautiful light and nice wing position. Agree on the images softness.

[arash_hazeghi]

Thanks Ken for sending the RAW file, unfortunately the problem here is that subject is OOF (out of focus), not much you can do in OOF case as sharpening will just bring out the noise and no details!!! Here is what I did but it isn't a big improvement. BTW, it is easier to track these birds when they are in the center of the frame.



If you have any from these series that is in focus it might be a better choice.

[WIlliam Maroldo]

Thanks for the demonstration Arash, I would have guessed underexposure. Was the image underexposed, as well as having focusing errors? As far as being OOF, I am not surprised at F5.6 which I would consider too narrow a DOF for a fairly large bird. However, since there are no parts of the bird sharp, it is either 1/1600sec was too slow(seems less likely), there no image stabilization, or the AF simply didn't lock on to part of the bird, or did at an earlier point in time. What exactly happened in your estimation? regards~Bill

[arash_hazeghi]

Thanks for the demonstration Arash, I would have guessed underexposure. Was the image underexposed, as well as having focusing errors? As far as being OOF, I am not surprised at F5.6 which I would consider too narrow a DOF for a fairly large bird. However, since there are no parts of the bird sharp, it is either 1/1600sec was too slow(seems less likely), there no image stabilization, or the AF simply didn't lock on to part of the bird, or did at an earlier point in time. What exactly happened in your estimation? regards~Bill

Hi Bill,
Exposure is perfect in RAW and same as the JPEG version, it isn't a DOF issue either, 1/1600sec is also enough for these guys, AF simply didn't lock in this case. It depends on when exactly Ken started tracking, maybe AF lost the bird before Ken got the shot or the bird was flying too fast. But Ken did the best he could exposure wise!!! AF for flight is not 100%, sometimes it misses, the more you try the better you get to know your AF capabilities and more likely that you will get sharp shots.

[Alfred Forns]

Hi Ken Tech problems aside it is one of your best ones, just like the overall feel !!

Af wise it is a large bird and difficult to place the sensor on they eye, I go for the neck area but lots of luck involved !! Eye looks pretty good to me !! Just tried making some changes to the original posted by lowering the saturation, increasing mid tone contrast and smoothing the bg.

You are coming up with some good images, your processing is lagging behind !!