More Sandhill Crane - Closeup

As a followup to my thread on the Reifel Bird Sanctuary, I thought that I would include this one of an extreme closeup of a Sandhill Crane.

We encountered these just at the end of the circuit around the sanctuary and I focused on one that was about 25 feet away. We (my son and I) were on a pathway and had stopped at a small pond that was immediately beside the pathway, about 5 feet away. While I focused on the sandhill crane that was far away, my son very quietly told me to look down. He had to do that a couple of times as I was very excited to see this bird. When I finally looked down there, about 5 to 8 feet away was this one. It was soooo close that I never did get a good photograph of it, the composition was really, shall we say, crap!

However I did get this as a closeup of the head and have done a close crop on it to show what the lens (a 70-200mm f2.8 IS L with a 1.4X extender at f4.0) is capable of.

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thats awesome, wicked detail

Very nice color, exposure and detail in the bird. I know you want to demonstrate the lens capabilities but I would have preferred a less severe crop as the framing is pretty tight on the bird. It still works mind you...this is just me nit picking. A suggestion and what many menbers have done in the past is to show the shot and then show a crop of the shot to demonstrate the detail allowed by the lens.

Gary: Thanks for the tip. I appreciate the comments.

Here is an 800x600 .jpg resize of the original raw version:

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Very nice shot John. Congratulations to your son for being so observant.

Wow...what a sharp shot! Damn that's a nice lens/TC combo!

Hey John, thats an exceptional head shot. Very sharp and well focused. Good job sir.

Thanks all for the kind comments. I must admit that it was very difficult to give the lens back and not pack it up in my luggage!

Very nice sharp shot. I do agree with Gary, the crop is little tight around the top and backside of the head. You do have room to play with. That is a great lens.