I got this shot late in the day at the Merced National Wildlife Refuge. D500, Nikon 200-500 lens, Nikon 1.4 TC, hand held, 1/3200th, f 8.0, 700mm, ISO 1000, AI Clear, cropped to 2800 x 3118
The crane is nice and sharp with a nice pose. The shadow is interesting and for me a nice touch. Whites look ok and not blown out but you might only know that from the original. Crop seems a bit tight on left side otherwise I like the composition.
Nice shot of the crane, Dave. I do think it could use more room and to me, the sky color seems a bit unnatural, though conversion to the web color space can sometimes cause that. The shadow of one wing on the other is really cool.
Great catch! I think a little more room on both sides would be good. It looks like NR may be a bit high, causing some loss of detail. Sometimes a bit of grain is better than being too smooth, giving some “tooth” for the eye. I wonder if the sky color is just a bit too saturated?
Actually, I had too much glass for the shot right then resulting in not much wiggle room on cropping causing me to make this a “portrait” shot. I am about to go back for some more possible waterfowl shots at that refuge and I’m considering removing my 1.4 TC which I pretty much always have in place for possibly getting more workable image area… at the trade off of having the subjects smaller. Decisions, decisions. As usual, thanks so much for you guy’s input!
