Willet

[Indranil Sircar]

This one is from earlier in the summer. I find it very hard to get these fast Willets in flight. I got lucky with this one taken late in the day! Settings were -

7D, EF 70-200 F4 IS + 1.2x @ 280mm hand held
1/1600 sec, f/8 Mode: Av Metering: Evaluative Exp comp: -1/3 ISO: 400

Used ACR to open up the exposure and fill light a bit. Adjusted for saturation and selective neutral colors. Applied DeNoise on the bg and the shadows (from ACR adjustment). Applied USM on the web version. Your C&C will be appreciated.

[Troy Lim]

Congrats on getting a shot of this in flight.
Placement wise, I feel it is too close to the top. Also, it could use another round of sharpening.

[Indranil Sircar]

Thanks Troy. Here is a repost with a different crop and additional usm.

[Troy Lim]

Like the repost. :)

[Thanaboon Jearkjirm]

Love the wing up position, the feather details and good job on getting the bird parallel to the sensor. I like the re-post very much.

[Lance Peters]

Hi Indranil - Repost looks good, could have bumped that ISO to 800 - would have given you more SS and frozen the wings a little more. Going to need around 1/2500th to really freeze the action.
Only other thing I might do is to select the bill and darken the blacks a little - can do through slective colour.
:)

[Bob Miller]

Like the repost! Good advise above!

[Julie Kenward]

Good job on the repost, Indranil. You can sure see the fall off in DOF as your eye moves to the back of the bird. As Lance suggested, taking up that ISO and getting more ss and maybe another notch of aperture would also have helped. I really like the placement of the bird in the repost - it looks much more natural. Nice job!

[Indranil Sircar]

Thanks for all the feedback. Appreciate it a lot.

Hi Lance, agree on a higher SS. I will fix the bill on the master. Thanks for the suggestions.