Larry’s last post reminded me that I had yet to post one of these from my April Costa Rica trip. We were very lucky that the first time this male left the nest cavity it chose this nicely exposed perch to land on. Judging by the hacked off branch in the back,it was prepared in hopes that the bird would land there.
As I mentioned in my comment on his post, I have not found a noise reduction technique for these birds (shot at high iso) that I’m really happy with. To get the noise down, the fine plumage of the crest tends to get smeared, so I end up leaving quite a bit of noise in the bird to avoid that.
Specific Feedback Requested
Anything.
Technical Details
Sony A1, FE 200-600 @ 433 mm, Monopod with Wimberley Sidekick mount, f/6.3, 1/1600, iso 4000. I probably should have gone with a slower shutter speed and reduced the iso. It probably would have produced fewer crisp images, but the lower noise would have been worth that. However, I was trying to get the shutter speed high enough for flight shots. With my lousy reaction time, I didn’t have a whole lot of success at that. Processed in LR & PS CC. For this one, I used Neat Image’s advanced panel which gives you quite a lot of control over noise reduction parameters. Cropped from a horizontal to a 3450 x 5052 vertical.
Hi Dennis! What a beautiful bird! I really like your comp. It must have been difficult to get this clear of a view of the full bird in these conditions.
Great view of the Quetzal. Not often do you get the chance to photograph them with a completely clear view. Too bad about the stump and the obvious cut branch and the broken part in front of the bird. Oh well. Nothing you could do.
@Keith_Bauer The cut branch isn’t too bad. I have another frame of this with a different head turn where I cloned out the cut stub and it looks pretty natural.
I like the pose and head turn. Color and detail are fine. Really nice background. As others have said the perch is a little problematic but there are probably things you can do. May be selectively darkening the broken area would make it less obvious.
The cut branches do not bother as they look like wind damage. You may burn them down a bit to make them less obvious. The bird is fantastic and am glad that you got a very nice picture. I saw quite a few of this species in Costa Rica in 1985, but at the time had a very minor piece of photographic equipment. The pose and colors are wonderful…Jim
