snowy egret breeding behavior
the egrets sit, groom, suddenly dart their beaks toward the sky, spreading their feathers in display.
it all happens very quickly, without sustaining the display pose. At least when I was there
2 variations. Different images, different crops. Taken in rapid succession.
no flash
Scott
unfortunately I agree
hoping the feedback would be better than my own judgment dictated
They are a bit soft.
Less concerned about the backgrounds because nothing I could do about that, but the softness.. I think I needed to shoot f5.6 or more, but even more likely was that the focus point missed, catching the body/feathers not the slight further back eye
The Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 L IS USM Lens is slightly soft in the center wide open at the shorter focal lengths, but gets very sharp when stopped down one stop. When the wide open aperture becomes f/5.6 at 259mm, center of the frame sharpness becomes good and is very sharp wide open at 400mm. Full frame corners are sharp wide open at all focal lengths with the long end suffering a bit from CA. Considering the focal length range of this lens, the sharpness delivered is simply excellent. ...Show more →
Sounds like it is optimized for the long end, sacrificing some on the short end WO .. guessing that at shorter portrait FL, the center softness WO is a pleasing attribute (for people) and you really didn't miss your focus after all.
Took a stab at it.
It looks like the resolution is probably there, mostly the contrast is soft @ WO.
Likely the raw would be fine to work from with some more aggressive sharpening/contrast (selective) etc. Kinda like when I shoot some low contrast lenses, I just need to push the pp a bit more than with higher contrast glass.
