This shot ws taken on Banjul beach in The Gambia, there were many gulls and terns along with waders scavenging for scraps after the local fishermen had landed their catch. This gull caught my attention because it looks to me as though it has the remains of a bird in it's bill and not some kind of fish.
Hi Jonathan, lovely low perspective, and he's certainly got himself a fair size juicy meal there. Cant really distinguish what the meal is. Im looking on my laptop, and the whites look on the border. Cool eye.
Jonathan, liked the bird's angle and composition. IQ seems to be a bit lacking...big crop or some shake in the head? Higher ISO and opening the aperture a bit would have given better result, I am thinking.
Kaustubh I was at first a little surprised at your comment regarding Image quality. Do you mean it is not correctly focussed or is there subject movement or has it been cropped too much resulting in a lack of detail?
As a rough guide the original shot (Raw file) was 5184 px x 3456px. I cannot recreate the exact same crop but I have just re-cropped again in a similar manner and I would guess that the image was cropped to about 2562 or 2600px by about 1671 to 1700 px. I would welcome your feedback and from any one else - do p you consider this crop far too big resulting in a loss of detail? maybe the image needs more sharpening or maybe there just isn't enough detail left? Any comments would be welcome - don't worry I am not and will not be offended at your comments or view points.:)
Last edited by Jonathan Ashton; 01-14-2011 at 01:41 PM.
Jonathan, from what you are saying, its roughly a 25% crop....in other words, 75% pixels from the orig are gone. 2600*1700 wud be 4.42MP...from the orig 18MP 7D file. That might be the reason feather details are not seen clearly( judging by the grey feathers as white feathers may not show details even if photo is very sharp)....but I think if the focus was sharp and subject shake was not there, then the IQ should have still held up. Yes, some sharpening of the bird will help....especially the grey feathers. When I first saw the image I thought the gull might have been shaking the head with the prey....but doesn't look like it now that I am seeing it again.
If you were that far, then I think shooting this at f/5.6 would have been better...you'd have got better BG blur and higher SS. With more blur in the BG, subject appears sharper too.
Kaustubh, thanks for the feedback. I see what you mean, I suspect the crop is too great but I will have another look at the image. Your comment regarding aperture is pertinent, although it was about six weeks ago I can remember taking the image and moving the aperture down from 5.6 thinking wow 1/1600 sec f7.1 - you would hardly ever get that in the UK. At that distance the magnification would have been minimal and therefore the DOF would have been adequate at 5.6.