Cropped Kingfisher

[Ronald Zigler]

I have been looking to photograph a kingfisher since last summer. I felt like I lucked out when I spotted this one from a bridge I was crossing. I took this image from my car. I tried to slowly get out after pulling to the side of the road, but, predictably, the bird flew away. I suppose I already know the downsides of this photo: I need to get closer since this may be a bit too much to expect for the crop that I made here. However, I nonetheless removed some distracting branches with photoshop elements. Camera & Settings: 60D, 300mm f4L + 1.4x, 1/1000, f5.6, ISO 800 (and by a careless mistake, I had the camera on -2/3 exposure compensation and, neglected to shoot in RAW.)

[Kerry Perkins]

Well Ronald, you paid dearly for your transgressions! As you know, IQ suffered from the large crop and underexposure. The bg is very noisy and the shadow areas of the bird are almost lost. Having said that, I wish I had any kind of shot of this bird! I just missed one this past weekend. I hope you get more opportunities to capture this bird!

[Michael Gerald-Yamasaki]

Ronald,

Greetings. Hate when that happens (the EV comp)... happens to me all the time . Outside the IQ & lighting issues, the overall composition looks good (subject placement in frame).

Cheers,

-Michael-

[Ravi Hirekatur]

Hi Ronald,
Agree with above comments about IQ and BG noise. I would love to get a picture of this bird in any format. It happens to me too when I see something exciting and I forget to look at the settings, and just shoot instinctively. I like the composition. To make the picture a little better, you could reduce the noise, clean up small branches in right lower corner, middle of bottom edge and bottom left corner and remove the bright spot to the left of the bird. Nice attempt though.

[John Chardine]

Kingfishers are very difficult to approach so you did well to obtain an image. They are fish-eaters (of course) and over the years have been persecuted. Issues have already been mentioned and this is not an easy fix. I spent a little time on a quick fix of the jpeg to clean up the branches/BG and denies, lighten where needed, and recrop. It's easy to say and hard to do but the best approach by far is to get the right raw material out of the camera so that this level of processing is unnecessary.

[Ronald Zigler]

Wow, thanks John.

[nancy hazen]

Ronald, I can relate to your excitement and frustration of getting a shot of the KF. I have many images of a spec on the image that was a KF Even though you had some problems with IQ, it is a great to just get them in the image. I swear they know people are watching, even when we are very far away. Thanks for posting your catch.
Nancy