Leucistic Pileated woodpecker

[Dave Goldberg]

I caught this one at a far distance deep in the woods, so its a heavy crop at a high ISO. Every time I shifted right to get a better HA, he'd move right along with me. I didn't recognize it, but a friend pointed out that it is leucistic, hence the the white shoulders.

NR in PR 4 and edits in DT 4.8 Comments appreciated, as always.

• Canon EOS R7
• RF100-500mm F4.5-7.1 L IS USM
• ƒ/7.1
• 500mm
• 1/2000s
• ISO 10000
• Wed, 20 November 2024 10:54 AM

 

[Jonathan Ashton]

Nice shot I like the composition, the hole in the tree top right was a good inclusion. Looking at the reds maybe a little more detail could have been had by juggling the highlights/luminance. I downloaded the image, I get the impression there is slight clipping in the highlights and the darks.

 

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi Dave ... if the head angle would be a bit better I would say a cool shot , even for me the head is turned too much away .
Overall comp and perch are very good , I do like the rich structured bark .
Color and tones looking ok to me ...
Surprised to see that much noise in the BG ....

TFS Andreas

 

[Dave Goldberg]

Jon - yes you're right, there is some clipping in post processing, but not in the raw file. I'll have to watch for that.

Andreas - unfortunately I couldn't get the right angle on this shot, with too many trees in the way. I have a habit of being too conservative with sharpening and noise reduction because I hate to have overcooked photos, but it's something I need to work on.

Thank you both for your input.

 

[Daniel Cadieux]

Such a neat bird with that leucism! The whites spots in the chest are a result of that as well. Yes, head angle is unfortunate, but if that is the only image I'd get from that unique individual then I would have been happy enough to keep it. You could have halved the ISO and SS for better noise, but this is also something any NR reduction software should handle easily.