These are collared aracari toucans I captured in Costa Rica. Because I feel when there are two subjects in the frame, both should be sharp, this shot was a challenge. I used a 500mm focal length, and that meant depth of field was shallow. Even with a small lens aperture, it would be hard to get both birds sharp with such a long lens plus the relative close distance to them. Given the reduced ambient light that resulted from a thick cloud cover, I had two choices: 1) I could take two shots, focusing first on one and then on the other and then put them together in Photoshop, or 2) I could zoom back to a shorter focal length which gains depth of field and then crop the image later. I chose to do the latter because it was uncertain whether or not I’d be able to photograph two good poses over the course of a few seconds. In addition, the Canon R5 with 45 megapixels offers hi res images that, when cropped, still look good. I zoomed back to 260mm, and then on my computer after I cropped the image, I used Topaz Gigapixe AI and then Topaz Sharpen AI to bring up the quality. Even so, you can see a slight amount of focus loss on the furthest toucan’s beak and chest. My settings were 1/320, f/4, 1250 ISO.
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