Brown-troated Sunbird

[Thanaboon Jearkjirm]

D700
300mm f/2.8G VR II with TC-20E III
600mm
ISO 800
f/7.1 at 1/500s
Manual mode
Matrix Metering
AF-C, Dynamic 9 points
Auto white balance
Tripod

Cropped from 4256x2832 to 844x1218

Highlight recovery, linear burn, curve, add vibrance, clean up background with clone tools on bottom left and right, NR and sharpen.

First time getting a chance to photograph this quite common bird, but only manage to get two similar shots. This is heavy crop and a lot of post processing hours (all the cloning, trying to deal with harsh light) than I would like, well until next time (will try again) :)

All comments and suggestions are welcome.

[Jeff Cashdollar]

Like the colors, eye and vert crop. Might take some off the right and bottom, all subject stuff. Sounds like the image was possibly overexposed or just fighting harsh light. Nice job recovering data and saving the picture. I usually use center point focus sensor, not ring of fire or dynamic (this does vary from time to time). This is one beautiful bird, love to see more pictures of this guy. Good detail for a large crop. Keep em coming and thanks for sharing.

[John Chardine]

Outstanding bird and lovely pose and eye contact. Nice and sharp. Too bad the flowers on the perch were not a bit more in focus. There seems to be a bit of a greenish or bluish tinge to the image and I wonder if you could try adjusting the white balance. I checked the bill which looks like it could be roughly neutral grey and it was a bit on the green and blue side of neutral.

[Kerry Perkins]

Hi TJ, this bird is really nice and I sure wish they were common in my neighborhood! Nice pose and intimate close-up shot. I think you did a great job considering the difficult lighting situation. Overall I think the image is a bit bright and I would suggest a curves or levels adjust to bring the highlights down a tad more. I like the diagonal line of the perch and the balancing effect of the flowers on the bottom of it. Nice composition and PP work, I'm sure you will get some better shots but this one is not bad at all!