Carmine in golden light

Southern Carmine Bee-eater. A touch more DOF would have been nice
Sth Luangwa Nat Park - Zambia

Nikon D2Xs
300 f/2.8 VR
ISO 100
f/2.8
1/400s

C & C most welcome

Cheers
Marc

Very nice light, head angle and details. I would go for a vertical crop and a bit room top and bottom. Too bad about the shadow crossing the bird's back.

Hey Marc!

Gorgeous bird and techs. Yes, a little better DOF would have helped in the tail here. Axel took the words right out of my mouth re the vert crop!!

Love the subject. the light and the headangle + eye contact is great. Sharpness is good also.

Agree with the vertical suggestion. I would also desat the pinks a bit.

Robert

Aside from thedof and shadow already mentioned I think a bit more room top and bottom, but certainly at the bottom might help.

Spectacular bird. I would have been nice to use more DOF.

The colour of this bird looks far too intense, did this result from the golden light?
Other than that a nice shot!

Marc, Marc, Marc, Great bird, great perch, and a very nice image but it could have been a contest winner... First, as suggested by others, the red SAT needs to be reduced (no matter how rich the light): the red on the neck looks detail-less. Reducing the SAT will bring back the detail.

Next, when doing look back over-the-shoulder portraits with the bird angled well away from you as here, the very first thing that you need to consider is working with additional depth-of-field, i.e., a smaller aperture. Here, however, are your specs:

ISO 100
f/2.8
1/400s

Why ISO 100??? Why f/2.8???

At ISO 400, you could have made the image at 1/200 sec. at f/8 (if my math is correct...)

Lastly, it seems that you reposted to eliminate the shadow (good job BTW) and cropped to a VERT. When you do re-post, please do it in a new pane and leave the ORIG so that latecomers like me can see the differences and not waste time trying to figure out if they are in the Twilight Zone. Thanks, and keep them coming.

beautiful picture. With a D2Xs, you could always shoot at 400+ ISO and have minimal noise. It would help for the depth of field but also for lens sharpness, which is usualy better around f/8