Murder of Crows & RP


Heckle and Jeckyl

What technical feedback would you like if any?

What artistic feedback would you like if any?

Pertinent technical details or techniques: iso 12800, 400 plus 2X extender, f6.3, 3200th, A7R4, handheld, 95% full frame

(If backgrounds have been removed, etc. please be honest with your techniques to help others learn)

If you would like your image to be eligible for a feature on the NPN Instagram (@NaturePhotoNet), add the tag ‘ig’ and leave your Instagram username below.

Hi David. The things I enjoy most about this image are (1) seeing the cheek feathers on the crow, and (2) seeing the subtle blues and greens of the crow. The front crow has a nice eye catchlight, providing some life to the portrait.
For me, the second bird (a cowbird?) detracts from the crow, being OOF and a brighter color than the crow. Also the detail in the crow is fairly soft, I see you were using an extremely high ISO, and that will always carry some penalty, as the sensors are trying to make sense of all light on the periphery of every pixel. At the fast shutter speed you used, and the apparently decent daylight, you could have used a much lower ISO. I ran the crow through Topaz Sharpen AI and it generated some nice detail in the crow.

Hi David
You did a really good job on Heckle black colors and detail. Maybe a f9-10, could have brought Jeckyl into better focus. I don’t have a problem with the high ISO, the A7R4 did a good job on the noise.
Interesting to see this much detail in Crows.
Peter

Detail and colors look fine, especially about the face. The high key element with the dark body works well. I could see this as more of a facial portrait.

Black birds are not easy to shoot. My first impression was – wonderful! But I see Dick has enhanced it a bit further. The bird in the BG doesn’t add anything, for me – it is very OOF but its outline looks too sharp for the focus.


thanks for comments
but in order to have a murder of crows, you need more than one. besides Heckle might get lonely…

1 Like

A neat image. I really like the pose of the crow. And I also suggest losing the second bird ( and you could call that a murder). The portrait looks good. It is amazing that there is that much detail that can be generated at12800 ISO with up to date sensors and software. The repost by Dick is a vg example of that and not working on the master file at that.

Hi David, I agree with Dick’s comments above. I think the ISO could be dropped and aperture increased on the image with a slower shutter speed to gain sharper focus on the body. The detail on the face is great. Nice portrait.