This is a black palm cockatoo native to New Guinea. I photographed it in the Bird Park in Bali, Indonesia. I love the bird and like the image, but I made a mistake. This is something I specifically try to avoid, but I had to shoot fast to get this picture and my camera settings weren't optimal. The foreground feathers are not sharp and they should be. Before I could take a second shot in which the feathers were sharp (so I could composite that with this image), the cockatoo flew. My settings were 1/800, f/5.6, and 1600 ISO. I should have changed the shutter to 1/400, and the lens aperture should have been f/16. That would have made the ISO 6400 due to the low light level, but with Neat Image software I could have mitigated the increased noise. With telephoto lenses and close proximity, depth of field is very shallow. Birds often have their chest or wing feathers on a plane one or two inches closer to the camera than their beak and eye. That is enough to require a small aperture to hold focus on everything that's important.
1 Comments
Feb 8, 2020, 2:01:28 PM
Barbara Vickers - Jim, you are so wonderfully critical of your own work. Not many of us are able to travel and photo so many exotic animals. It is a joy to see this beautiful bird, even if some of his feathers are mildly out of focus. Thanks for all you do.