A female blue-throated bee-eater prepares a sortie while a male, presumably her mate, looks on. After three days, the bee-eaters came to accept us; I forgot about blinds, approached their perch standing up, and got as close as I wanted. I narrowed down the aperture because I was so close; I kept the ISO at 640 to save myself the trouble of noise-reducing later; and I lived with a SS of 1/200, as the birds were usually fairly still on their perch. Here, though, the female, preparing to fly, is partly blurred, but I like the effect, all the more so because her head is still sharp. What do you think?
Device: Nikon D3S
Lens: VR 600mm F/4G
Focal Length: 600mm
Aperture: F/10
Shutter Speed: 1/200
Exposure Mode: Aperture Priority
Exposure Comp.: +1.33
ISO Sensitivity: ISO 640
Metering Mode: Center-Weight
Subject Distance: 8.4 m
Photoshoppery: Not much. Because the bee-eaters didn't mind us, I was able to compose this shot in the field, so there was no need to add canvas. The BG was clean; I cloned nothing out. I cropped the image only to give it a more square shape. Shooting at ISO 640, I had little need to run noise reduction. I sharpened the birds.







Reply With Quote
Just a question - the one on the left you say is a female, and the one on the right is male. If so, their colours are very similar.

