Longtail Duck (Eye Level Theme)

[Steve Large]

Hi Everyone,
Here is a pic of one of my favorite ducks for the "Eye Level" theme. Taken at Deep Bay on Vancouver Island.

Stats: Canon 50D, 500mm F/4 with 1.4x, ISO 800, F/8 at 1/1600 sec

Thanks in advance for you comments,

Steve

[Jim Flowers]

Lovely Image Steve! Love the "head-turn" and eye contact and low angle. Just wish for it to be a little sharper.

Jim

[Richard Stern]

Hi Steve,

I agree with Jim, it looks a little soft and lacking feather detail. But well done for getting that close and at eye level. I have never succeeded in doing that with this species. Nice water and reflection.

Richard

[Chris Korman]

I like the steel blue color of the water. The duck looks like he's got a cool new hair cut. I guess the only thing is that the whites a little too hot.

[Don Nelson]

Beautiful image of a drake.

Sharpness? Blown Whites?
Importing the small JPG into photoshop shows that you should be able to sharpen it up a bit. Very few pixels are hot -- most are red channel in the tiny bit of the crest, a single blue pixel and less than ten showing yelllow; none white so you aren't blown-- you should be able to recover these in the ACR with recovery slider(if they really are such in the tif). These could be coming from the conversion to sRGB/jpg - I've seen that happen when converting from 16bit tif.

Excellent image.

[Steve Large]

Hey Everyone,
Thanks for your comments. I really should have spent a bit more time on this one! Here is the repost and I am sure you will agree that there is a noticeable improvement on the sharpness and detail.

Take care and good light,

Steve