Sanderlings

[Dave Blinder]

Taken this past Saturday. Sandy Hook, NJ

Best angles on the duo I managed, would have liked the right bird's body more parallel to the camera. This was the only sharp frame I got with good HA's. A bit of motion blur or DOF falloff on some plumage on right bird.

NR, Smart Sharpen, slight crop to center image a bit

EF 500 F/4, tripod foot on the sand
Camera Canon EOS 7D
Exposure 0.006 sec (1/160)
Aperture f/13.0
Focal Length 700 mm
ISO Speed 400
Exposure Bias +1 EV

[Dany Tielens]

Can't find a real sharp bird here...
should give it another try...keep shooting!

[Dave Blinder]

I can find a real sharp bird... on the left.

Left bird :



Right bird:

[Kaustubh Deshpande]

Dave, this is a beautiful shot. The pebbles and the BG color add a lot. Superb exposure and composition. If mine, I'd try sharpening the oof bird a little more than the main one. The other bird doesn't look too bad in that 100% crop. I think a little stronger USM round can make it look much sharper than it is right now.

[Dave Blinder]

Thanks for the helpful insight Kaustubh.

Wondering if anyone also has some advice on settings of the image? higher iso?

[Kaustubh Deshpande]

Dave, I dont think higher ISO could have helped a lot. You alredy stopped down to f/13 and as we all know, diffraction related loss of sharpness can creep in with smaller apertures. Considering its a 100% crop of a 18MP file, I think the sharpness on the sharp bird looks good. Have you done any luminance NR on the entire image? the BG in the 100% crop looks squeaky clean...but am not familiar with 7d and it is probably to be expected at iso400 since you exposed properly. If you have done luminance NR, then I would suggest turning that off completely and later do NR only on the Bg and not on the birds. What was the sharpness setting on the RAW file? with luminance NR set to 0, you can play with the sharpness slider in RAW conversion....to see if the sharp bird can be sharper without being oversharpened.

[Mark Young]

Lovely Dave, I like the composition of the 2 birds.

[Daniel Cadieux]

I like the comp too, and you did best you could with the relataive positions of the two birds to one another. Perhaps your best bet would have been to physically move left (if these guys were not too easily spooked)...this would have brought them in the same plane of focus - not to mention getting a better body angle on the right bird. Good exposure and nice soft colours. As posted both birds could stand more sharpening, although I see the left one is quite sharp on the close-up.

[Dave Blinder]

Thanks for all the valuable feedback guys. Here's a different quick edit straight from the RAW. No NR run, sharpened in ACR with these settings: Amount-21, Radius-0.8, Detail-25, Masking-60

[Dave Blinder]

Perhaps your best bet would have been to physically move left (if these guys were not too easily spooked)

Hi Daniel, I did try to move left a few times, but unfortunately the birds retreated each time.