Wildlife Photos from the DMZ, South Korea

[Silverbackmp]

Posted below are pics that I took on the southern edge of the DMZ (near Panmunjum), South Korea. Critques are welcome.


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If you look really carefully, this deer has fangs protruding from it's upper teeth; I can only assume that they use these to dig for roots. I cropped signifcantly to get this pic; I really want to get a closer deer pic. However, I don't want to venture too far off of the roads or the rice fields because you can run into this:

 

[Silverbackmp]

Also, this sign is interesting:

Koreans have a strong culture of gathering wild herbs; apprarently this sign translates as "Gathering wild herbs in this location is not worth dying for."

 

[Silverbackmp]

Bump

I really would like some critique as these are my first wildlife shots and first real shots with my Sigma 120-300mm f/2.8 and 1.4 extender. Would like critiqe about post processing as well.

Thanks

 

[Heck]

They seem like you lost alot of sharpness or detail. are all of them shot at max zoom and then cropped also? Where you hand holding the camera by any chance?

 

[Silverbackmp]

They seem like you lost alot of sharpness or detail. are all of them shot at max zoom and then cropped also? Where you hand holding the camera by any chance?

All were at least slightly cropped and most likely shot at max zoom.

Of the pics, the pheasents, deer, and hawk on the wire were cropped the most.

Most were shot out of the car window (with the engine turned off) using the window ledge as a rest.

#3 was hand held.

I was hoping that bumping up to ISO 400 would allow a faster shutter speed in daylight conditions to minimize detail loss but apparently this was not the case.

I also ran them through Nik Define on the automatic setting so I did loose a slight amount of detail with that. Any tips for shooting out of the car window to get better sharpness?