Ardgaty Red Kites

weepete · Jul 7, 2019

Had a recent trip up to a Argaty farm in Doune where they reintroduced red kites to Scotland as part of an RSPB program. At one point they we were down to 5 breeding pairs in the UK, all of them in Wales. Since they have been re-introduced in the 80's they've been a success and it was wonderful to see these birds of prey close up from their hide.

I'm a bit out of practise and had to shoot at a higher ISO than I would have liked, also struggled with backlighting in some of my shots. I really felt the limitations of my camera kreeping in now and the noise level bugged me in editing and the inability to use EC in manual mode. I really need to get myself an IPS panel too as I was struggling with some of the exposures. Took two rounds of editing to get myself resonably happy with them.

Ardgaty Red Kites 9 by wee_pete, on Flickr

Ardgaty Red Kites 3 by wee_pete, on Flickr

Ardgaty Red Kites 6 by wee_pete, on Flickr

Ardgaty Red Kites 2 by wee_pete, on Flickr

Ardgaty Red Kites 7 by wee_pete, on Flickr

Ardgaty Red Kites 18 by wee_pete, on Flickr

zulu42 · Jul 7, 2019

Great shooting. Nice work on the backgrounds they really bring life to these shots.

Jeff15 · Jul 7, 2019

Very good shots..............

baturn · Jul 7, 2019

Very nice! beautiful birds.

PJM · Jul 7, 2019

Awesome birds. I like the fifth one!

Jeff G · Jul 7, 2019

I would never have guessed you struggled with these, they look great! Some beautiful shots.

JonFZ300 · Jul 7, 2019

excellent

Flying Panda · Jul 8, 2019

Great capture! I really like the eye on that last image.

weepete · Jul 8, 2019

zulu42 said:
Great shooting. Nice work on the backgrounds they really bring life to these shots.

Thanks zulu42, some of them needed a bit of careful management to bring out the bues in the sky and the ones with grass got a little luminance reduction in the green channel as they were a bit oversaturated.

Jeff15 said:
Very good shots..............

Thanks Jeff15, glad you like them!

baturn said:
Very nice! beautiful birds.

Thanks baturn, they were stunning to see and made pretty good models

PJM said:
Awesome birds. I like the fifth one!

Thankd PJM, the interaction of the birds was pretty awesome, with multiple lining up and swoop for the food.

Jeff G said:
I would never have guessed you struggled with these, they look great! Some beautiful shots.

Thanks Jeff G, because of the backlighting I'd taken a few test shots and set the camera to preserve the highlights as much as I could. but that meant there was a fair bit of underexposure on the birds and combined with the high ISO and my 10 year old sensor meant there was a bit more noise than I would have liked.

JonFZ300 said:
excellent

Thanks JonFZ300, it was a cracking place to see the birds!

Flying Panda said:
Great capture! I really like the eye on that last image.

Thanks Flying Panda, that last one was my Mrs favorite, but it's good when you can get the eye sharp!

K9Kirk · Jul 8, 2019

I didn't know about Red Kites so thanks for the pics and story on them. As far as your pictures go, join the club! I'm constantly at battle with my "so-so" camera. It doesn't even have the option to micro adjust the auto focus and the sensors aren't good enough for a demanding lens so my pics never are as sharp as they could be. I'm sort of waiting on the Canon 7D mark III to come out before I start shelling out good money on older technology. Also, you weren't trying to get them on the cover of some magazine so you shouldn't be too hard on yourself. Nice pics, they look fine, at least good enough for a forum!

weepete · Jul 10, 2019

K9Kirk said:
I didn't know about Red Kites so thanks for the pics and story on them. As far as your pictures go, join the club! I'm constantly at battle with my "so-so" camera. It doesn't even have the option to micro adjust the auto focus and the sensors aren't good enough for a demanding lens so my pics never are as sharp as they could be. I'm sort of waiting on the Canon 7D mark III to come out before I start shelling out good money on older technology. Also, you weren't trying to get them on the cover of some magazine so you shouldn't be too hard on yourself. Nice pics, they look fine, at least good enough for a forum!

Thanks mate, I can sympathise with the equipment woes. For a long time I had a good camera but was stuck using with kit lens with a broken AF motor as it's all I could afford at that time.

I'm at a stage now where I'm trying to lift my photography to the next level, so that magazine cover shot is something I'm aiming for. It's difficult as I do feel like I'm hitting the limits of my gear now, but don't really have the cash to spend on some pro level stuff, anything from now onwards is going to be a significant investment.

I'm debating big lenses in my head at the moment to see if I can get a significant enough improvement in sharpness . Jury is still out.