It's hard to imagine the intensity of colors in so many birds. One of the African species that I'm always excited to see is the glossy starling. My Land Rover pulled up next to this bird as it was searching for food, and for about 10 seconds I was able to capture frame-filling shots. This picture is not cropped. Fortunately, the bird was in the shade. In sunlight, these starlings are stunning, but the contrast is too much for digital technology to handle and the colors don't look as intense as they do in diffused light. The diminished illumination, though, forced my ISO to be high. However, with Neat Image software, I mitigated the noise completely. My settings were 1/800 (because birds move so fast), f/10, and 6400 ISO. I used a 500mm lens plus a 1.4x teleconverter giving me 700mm of focal length.
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