Male Gadwall photographed at San Elijo estuary, San Diego county, a few days ago. Would love to have the near wing tips and back plumage in sharper focus, but extra DOF would require higher ISO and I'm not sure the trade off would have been beneficial.
Bill, nice wing position and exposure. water looks nice as well. To nail these at such close distance, you need high SS and DOF( to get both head and wings sharp...especially if the duck is angled this way)...higher ISO would have give you that but you were probably not set up for a wing flap. When ducks take a quick bath, they usually do wing flaps. key is anticipating it and then quickly changing the iso to get the ss-f-stop needed.
would have better with duck parallel and not looking away. We just need to keep trying these until we nail one :-)
Bill....nice job on this! the wing detail and the water are great! Also loving the light on the wings and the bg is interesting to me as it reflects the curves in the water.
If it's noise you are worried about you shouldn't hesitate to push it higher if you need...a camera like the 1d Mk IV can handle it no sweat. Having said this I think you had enough SS, it's that the focus was on the flank rather than the face (or so it appears to be). The near wing tips show a bit of movement, which is fine.
The sharp look at the dorsal surface of the near wing makes me forget that the bird's head is angled slightly away from us.
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