not so ugly duckling

[gio67]

[David Kilpatrick]

Great colours, focus a bit soft on the neck. Good light and tone for this subject.

David

[gio67]

thanks david,and i see what you mean about the focus

[Dusty]

Ummmmmmm. Mallard. Good eating! Anyone for roast duck tonight?

It looks real enough to reach out and grab him!

Dusty

[Cameron]

Such a beautiful water fowl. Mighty fine vittles if I may add. It is said that no two ducks have the same call. However, the domesticated white duck and the Mallard have the same call.
Food for thought,
Cam

[KevinBarrett]

I can never get a good shot of a bird. They're probably one of the more challenging subjects for a camera, being very demanding for sharpness of detail. If there's a trick to getting it right, I haven't discovered it yet. That said, I wonder how complicated it would be to clone out that bottle on the left?

And I should add, welcome to the forum, Cameron!

[jcoffin]

Great colours, focus a bit soft on the neck. Good light and tone for this subject.

David

At least part of the time, I'm pretty sure soft-looking areas in some pictures of waterfowl are an optical illusion. In some cases, there's a soft-looking area even though areas that are both closer and farther away are clearly sharp and within the DoF. For example, on this shot of a Mallard, the beak is sharp, and so is the back (covering both closer and farther away) but around the same part of the back of the neck, it's a bit soft looking.

On the other hand, when he shifts his pose a bit, the "softness" disappears:

and even in a 100% crop, the neck looks nice and sharp, though now the top of the head looks a bit soft:

(Both shots: K/M 7D, Tamron 70-210/2.8 @ 210mm).

[gio67]

I can never get a good shot of a bird. They're probably one of the more challenging subjects for a camera, being very demanding for sharpness of detail. If there's a trick to getting it right, I haven't discovered it yet. That said, I wonder how complicated it would be to clone out that bottle on the left?

And I should add, welcome to the forum, Cameron!

thanks for the welcome cameron, i'm usually the same with pics of birds, just got a bit lucky this time, the bottle was actually a submerged wooden sort of perching post or something, but it does look like a bottle

[gio67]

sorry kevin got that wrong

[jcoffin]

and even in a 100% crop, the neck looks nice and sharp, though now the top of the head looks a bit soft:

[...and included an attachment that seemed (to me) to show approximately that].

Looking at it a bit more, I decided I didn't like the conversion much. For fun, I tried a conversion with Bibble instead of ACR, and got this:

This result seems to fit with my expectations a bit better: I focused reasonably well on the eye (or maybe a bit closer) and parts that are farther away go out of focus as expected. The DoF is shallow, but that's expected under the circumstances (210mm, f/3.5, ~10 feet away).

[jcoffin]

sorry kevin got that wrong

Hi Gio (is that your name?),

Welcome to the forum -- nice shot. I hope you don't mind my adding a few more to the thread. Mine definitely don't show the colors nearly as nicely, but the point about sharpness caught my attention and I got a bit carried away. Sorry 'bout that.

[Dusty]

I can never get a good shot of a bird. They're probably one of the more challenging subjects for a camera, being very demanding for sharpness of detail. If there's a trick to getting it right, I haven't discovered it yet. That said, I wonder how complicated it would be to clone out that bottle on the left?

And I should add, welcome to the forum, Cameron!

Sometimes, bird are a poor target for autofocus mechanisms, and you're usually working with a long lens, so DOF is precious. Double check the focus, and sometimes you can focus on the branch/ground instead of the bird. They also tend to have very quick, quirky movements when not in flight, so they can move a millimeter in a 1/100 sec shot. Small birds are worse for that, but watch a Bald Eagle sometimes in a zoo.

Dusty

[Dusty]

At least part of the time, I'm pretty sure soft-looking areas in some pictures of waterfowl are an optical illusion. In some cases, there's a soft-looking area even though areas that are both closer and farther away are clearly sharp and within the DoF. For example, on this shot of a Mallard, the beak is sharp, and so is the back (covering both closer and farther away) but around the same part of the back of the neck, it's a bit soft looking.

(Both shots: K/M 7D, Tamron 70-210/2.8 @ 210mm).

Waterfowl by their very nature are oily - that's the secret of repelling water! Look at your shot #1 and see how the water actually beads up in his back feathers. Sometimes this can give you that optical illusion that it's OOF, but if you take other feathers, coat them lightly with some baby oil, and shift their positions in the light, you should be able to see this. Not only will the oil kill the fluffy feather details, but it can also give it a matte look.

Dusty

[Dr. Harout]

Did I say Hi to Cameron?

Nice shots Gio67.