Yet Another Swallow

A violet-green again this time. This isn't the Mister, but the male of another pair that has taken to perching on a dead fig tree (a long story on that one). It's small enough to allow me to get an angle from above and get a nice bg. We also had some nice light this morning (the rain returns tomorrow).

I finally decided to try a 2x teleconverter to see how it would work since I can get some autofocus with the 1Div. I'm finding that I like it though it takes careful attention to technique. Certainly any worries about image quality have been alleviated by the images I've taken thus far. I didn't splurge on the mark iii, but bought a used mark ii for about half the price.

1Div, 500mm f4 ISL + 2.0TC, Jobu Gimbal on RRS legs, f10, 1/400, iso 500, Aperture Priority, -1/3 stop exposure compensation (there are a few small spots of blown white and a few of saturated black in this image-the dynamic range was outrageous). Processed in LR5 and CS6. Cropped to a 4x5 format and some extra branches cloned out. These colors are out of the camera. My only color adjustments were a bit of playing with the highlights to bring out detail in the whites. Minimal sharpening. Taken this morning at 7:04 am.

Your comments and criticisms are always appreciated.

Thanks for looking,