Pochard

Shot late this afternoon at our local Wiltshire Wildlife Trust reserve.

K7, 55-300 @300, 1/200th sec. @f5.8, hand-held, manual focus,cropped & pp in PSE9.



[IMG]http://i1021.photobucket.com/albums/af340/rogerhlane/LangfordLakes025crop_filteredcropii.jpg[/IMG]

C&C welcome.

Coker.

I think I would be tempted to lighten the shadows a touch Roger. Very nice image.

There appears to be some odd green artefacts in the background and unfortunately, your subject is not sharp.

Possibly due to 300mm at 1/200th hand held. Not impossible, but a bit of a challenge.

I think it's reasonably sharp, but could be better. The beak looks okay, but the eye doesn't. This is wide open at 300mm, perhaps stop down a bit if possible (what was the ISO?).

I think that there are several factors influencing the lack of sharpness in this image.

1: The shutter speed is too slow at 1/200th for a 300mm lens.
2: The aperture is too wide making any available DOF very small.
3: The available light didn't allow the use of more appropriate figures for 1 & 2 above and excessively high ISO (though we don't yet know what was used) on the K7 introduces noise.
4: The eyes are not in the plane of focus.
5: The image is cropped, perhaps a bit too much.

Thanks for all comments, folks.
ISO was 400.
Crop is about 40% of the original.

As ever(?), it was a case of needs must: the light was what it was, I only have the 55-300,the level of crop is necessary to get a reasonable size (of bird) onto an A4 print.

....But apart from that, everything's fine!

I'll keep trying!

Roger.

I've taken the liberty of playing around with it Roger, see what you think. I always set my shutter speed at around 1/320 when shooting at the long end of my 55-300. Unfortunately or fortunately depending on the situation, shooting with a zoom at them long end means a reduced DOF. If you are using shutter priority for moving wildlife/birds I always find upping the ISO is necessary for low light. Neat Image is a good noise reduction software which can be used in PSE.

[IMG]http://i1098.photobucket.com/albums/g370/jimbo_609/LangfordLakes025crop_filteredcropii1.jpg[/IMG]

Thanks, Jim, & of course I don't mind!

That certainly is an improvement. I had put mine though Neat Image, using the"recommended" settings. Perhaps something a little stronger was required...

Roger.