Wild Ring Necked Pheasant

[Steven Kersting]

Weather was so nice yesterday I decided to play hooky and see if I could get some AM shots of Harriers.
Spent 6 hrs staked out and did manage to see the Harriers a couple times, but no great pics. But all morning the male pheasants were calling and staking out their territory for mating season. They were really close but you couldn't see them.

Eventually this one showed himself on his way to a cornfield across the street.


Camera Nikon D3
Exposure 0.002 sec (1/500)
Aperture f/5.6
Focal Length 800 mm (on Tripod)
ISO Speed 900
Exposure Bias 0 EV
Subject Distance 75 m

Question is, does this convey "wild pheasant in it's natural habitat"? Is the grass distracting?
I have a picture which I think is a better pose and coveys "habitat better", but shows less of the bird. I have another of the bird completely visible as he was crossing shorter grass on his way to the cornfield, but it doesn't convey "habitat" to me....
(the others are available on my flickr; pic is a link)

Any other critique is appreciated...

[Dave Leroy]

It definitely conveys the pheasant in habitat to me. A very typical sight for a field bird. Ideally a step or two earlier to get a bit further away from oof grass stalks on right would have been a bit better for me. Still works very well as is.

A few parts of bird may have some motion blur including the head area.

Very nicely exposed and colours are spot on.

Wish it was mine and good for you to persevere.

Dave

[Steven Kersting]

Thanks, I'm not sure it's motion blur so much as being at the limits of resolution...The bird was 75m away and I had a 1.4x attached... He was moving slowly and the SS is pretty fast considering I used a tripod. It doesn't seem like anything is 100% sharp.

I've since adjusted the focus for this lens slightly hoping that might help.

[Steven Kersting]

It certainly is a typical habitat for a pheasant. The oof grasses in the fg are a bit distracting.
I have the impression that the image quality suffered from cropping ?
Also, the darker areas of the bird lack details and appear blocked on my screen.

Almost definitely suffered from cropping, it's about 30% of the original.

Not sure what you mean by "blocked"....

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Steven,
What time of day was this? It does seem that some of the colors and shadow areas are lacking fine detail.....so many things can be the culprit. Crop is one.. and given the magnification and angle.....could be the culrpit. SS.....could definitely be another.....as these guys are pretty fast....so unless he paused.....may have been another factor. It does appear you have some FG grasses OOF.....so perhaps you were hooting through grass also that may have contributed? Many more questions.....was the red on the face blown in the histogram? Canon has a tendency to do this so not sure about Nikons. I am thinking you may have done something in PP'ing as the whites on the neck look really hot.....so may be worth a revisit from scratch to do some selective layers and see if you can eek out as much detail as possible. They are quite beautiful birds so I hope you get plenty of more opportunities at it!

[Steven Kersting]

It was 10:30 am... I can't recall if it was still slightly overcast at the time but looking at the image I would say it was.
I do think crop and magnification are major contributors. And the lens *might* have a slight backfocus to it...(I've done a calibration check/set, I'll see how that works)
The reds are not blown, actually nothing is blown, but there is a lack of detail.
The bird was making his way thru quite slowly, stopping to call every once in a while and just pecking.

With post work I never really know "where to stop", so sometimes I do too little and sometimes I do too much....especially w/ less than perfect images.

I did find that my output sharpening was turned off so that definitely was a factor.(I tend to be a bit lazy when just posting to Flickr and just use LR plugin.)

Here's another image taken from about 50m. I like this pose better, but it shows less of the bird.