Boreal Chickadee

[Paul Lagasi]

I went to Algonquin Park a week ago and photographed these beautiful little birds but only brought my 300 2.8. This week I went back with my 500 f4.
What started out as a beautiful sunny day, turned into a dark overcast one.
I decided to make the best of it even though my setup was in the woods under a canopy of trees
I didn't really want to go much higher on ISO, so 1/800 was all I could get. This may sound like a lot to some but these birds rarely stay still, always on the move.

Is it too saturated?

I removed the right side of perch, way to out of focus, added catchlight

Nikon D700
Nikon 500 f4
1/800
f4
f6.3
iso-800
-0.3 ev

Thanks for looking

[Randy Stout]

Paul:

I often push the D700 to ISO 1000 if there aren't lots of shadow areas.

Excellent pose. Good catchlight, I am seeing a fair amount of color splotching in the BG, esp. the greens.

I do think the sat. is just a bit high, and perhaps a bit of a blue cast on the whites?

Was flash an option for you?

cheers

Randy

[Paul Lagasi]

Randy, I don't even own a flash rarely use the one on camera but I may have to look into one..I surely could have used it this day.

Here is the image as I processed it, on my machine looks colorful and bright but when I post to BPN it looks lacklustre..blah so I added a bit of saturation (maybe way too much) to see how it went...maybe its my monitor..

The splotching is probably too much saturation
but the blues....not the first time I've had the blues...

[Arthur Morris]

I like the colors in the original post best (or maybe something 1/2 way between the two...) Love the bird and the pose. Bummer on the two broken parts of the perch. A contrast mask (15/65/0) on the brown cap and eye would give it some pop.

[Randy Stout]

Paul:

I used some of the sponge techniques that Daniel uses so effectively, and sponged in a little more saturation on the colored areas of the bird, and desaturated the broken ends of the perch to downplay them.

Pretty subtle, but I think it works well enough that I would revisit the original and tweak it some more.

Excellent pose!

Cheers

Randy

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Paul,
I think the repost by Randy addresses the issues I had on the broken parts of the perch, Nicely handled all in all and a flash is a great investment for just such situations!

[Ryan Schain]

The repost works for sure. I might add a sliver of canvas to the left side, as the tail is a bit too close to the edge for me. In a perfect world I'd like an improved head angle and the hot spots on the neck and head to show detail.