Critique?

Click to view attachment

Jeremy

The animal is nicely lit. There is some action. But the bokeh is a problem. Particularly the double line (nisen) bokeh in the busy background.

I was feeling vaguely unhappy about the bokeh on this and on Mud, but since I took them with what I understood was supposed to be a reasonably good, if perhaps old, lens (Canon 100-400L), I thought it must just be me.

So, what alternative is there? It's going to be a while before I do any more animal shots like these, but I'll be interested in other possibilities when the time comes, particularly since that lens isn't mine.

Jeremy

What he said about the bokeh - I wonder if you have oversharpened the image. This can make bad bokeh become truly terrible. Or maybe you just have a bad copy of your 100-400.

Compositionally, I think it would have helped to take either the whole animal, or just a headshot. This is neither one nor t'other, and it doesn't really work for me.

Hi Jeremy,

I really love the expression on the - oh well I dont know what it is - on the whole animal and the light. What I dont like is the framing, its standing half in there, it does not work for me. Seems you avoided going more to the right because of some bushes in the foreground. If possible I would have tried to close in more on its head - but I know how hard it can be to just capture a good frame with a tele regardless of zoom. The bokeh is maybe not the best but I dont care here.

Christian

Interesting expression, if I can use that word to describe an animal. I like that.

Is no one else bothered by what looks like a small tree sticking up his nose? Is he eating the tree? That's not clear.

It was capture sharpened and then sharpened for screen display, both in LR. I used the default "landscape" settings (40 / 0.8 / 50). Sliding the mask up helps a little bit, but not much, as does taking amount down to zero, so I don't think it's sharpening that's the problem.

Can you get a sample of a lens that's bad for bokeh? I thought it was a feature of design rather than implementation. It's pretty sharp.

I take the composition point. I'll try a tighter crop. For some reason I cut his back end off when I took it.

I think he was eating the branch, by the way.

Jeremy

Jeremy,

Honestly, I don't know... maybe there is a lens fundi on here who can answer this. What I have noticed with my own tele shots is that the bokeh is usually at its worst when the shot is strongly backlit, as is the case with both your "sniff" and "mud". With front-lit shots it is less of an issue. I will post some shots illustrating this when I get home tonight.

Ed

I am no expert in antelope behaviour, but it looks as if he is sniffing the twig for scent-marking.