Ploceus velatus (in flight)

[Rudi van den Heever]

Equipment: Canon 7D and 500mm F4 lens
Settings: 1/5000s at f5.6 and ISO 800

[Don Nelson]

Beautiful bird - good sharp capture on the head and legs in flight, always a challenge.
I might sharpen it a bit more. Another suggestion would be to lighten the iris with an edited overlay layer. I would
You should do it before resizing - my poor attempt on your small jpeg shows the effect:

[Don Nelson]

BTW - effect is just iris lightening - after posting you will want to do just a bit less than the example(you will have more control on the pre-resize image). I don't think it needs more sharpening and this wasn't done on the edit

[gail bisson]

Getting a bird tack sharp in a direct approaching flight direction is no easy feat. I can see a bit of noise in the wings though ( ...7D is a pain sometimes) Is this a big crop? Regardledd a great shot of this masked weaver?
Gail

[Kaustubh Deshpande]

Agree there is some noise....but fine shot nevertheless...not an easy one. loved the head on angle and the BG.

[Paul Lagasi]

Lovely bird and image, the stare is intense...tough capture. Nits already mentioned above..well done

[Dumay de Boulle]

The eyes look perfect in the OP...I know these birds well. You did well to just get it in the frame. Crits already covered.

[Bill Dix]

Tricky shot to pull off. Well captured. OP looks OK to me.

[Jonathan Ashton]

I like the OP, suggest a little noise reduction, a very difficult shot to get in focus but you did it - well done. Apart from the noise I wonder if the image is oversharpened, the eye looks granular, I suspect some NR prior to sharpening would help the image considerably.

[Cheryl Arena Molennor]

Super cool and the head is in great focus. Repost looks good