Male Goosander

Gallery: AvianPosted January 30, 2014111 views5 comments

Male Goosander
Geneva, Switzerland 2014/01/29 14.34
D300s 150-500mm at 180mm
ISO 1250
1/800s at f7.1 EV +0.67 WB manual Center Weighted Average
Hand held
Original NEF Raw file (14 bit) 21.3Mb TIFF file cropped from 35M to 21.3Mb
Photoshop CS3 No sharpening No Noise reduction

During the last three weeks I shot hundreds of frames of male goosanders, mostly in bright sunlight. Yesterday was dull and overcast; I decided to make changes.
I moved the focal point four notches forward and chose to shoot NEF raw – first time in 3 years! Head feathers appear black but are very dark green in bright light. The iris is black and is usually quite difficult to pick out. In this shot the tail feathers don’t look sharp to me – I’m not sure why.

Comments

5 comments

Comment posted by SandyRichardsBrown on January 30, 2014 at 11:58 AM

Nice pose from this fellow, but you've lost a lot of detail in the blacks and whites.
A program like Viveza would help reclaim much of it -

Sandy

Registered on November 24, 2003, 3937 Posts, 12909 Comments

Comment posted by Philip Hodgkins on January 30, 2014 at 6:55 PM

Shooting RAW with most of the dynamic range in two camps virtually demands some adjustment of b/w, either through the sliders for shadow/highlight in ACR, or as Sandy says with any of a number of plugins like NIK Viveza or Topaz Detail, to name a few. I suspect the tail feathers look soft because of the sheen of water dulling the shadow detail. Aside from that, a handsome bird in a well composed image.

Registered on July 24, 2006, 2741 Posts, 12349 Comments

Comment posted by Dennis Plank on January 30, 2014 at 8:01 PM

Very nice, David. Excellent handling of the exposure with full detail in the whites and the darks. The faint green on the head is nicely visible. Tail looks sharp enough to my eye. I'm not sure why you chose not to use noise reduction-I'm starting to see some bg noise in the larger image.

Registered on January 28, 2008, 1767 Posts, 23192 Comments

Comment posted by Sharon Hallowell on January 31, 2014 at 10:24 AM

I love the funky reflection in this shot! Would like to see the blacks brought up just a little. Sharon

Registered on November 1, 2003, 392 Posts, 4810 Comments

Comment posted by Charles Gangas on February 1, 2014 at 8:21 AM

A very pleasing composition David. I think you have the whites exposed well but I agree with Sharon that the blacks could be brought up a bit. Nice work.

Registered on August 12, 2009, 544 Posts, 2414 Comments