Low light Cooper's Hawk

[zulu42]

This is about the minimum light I can work with for an almost usable shot. After sunset on my hike out, this beautiful little Cooper's hawk did a nice close fly-by for me and posed upon a post.

C&C welcome and thanks for looking

D800 with Tamron 150-600 G2
ISO 3200 f/8 460mm 1/200 hand held. I could have opened up the aperture past f/8 but my lens drops in sharpness significantly. This has some denoise in LR and unsharp mask in PS

of course way too slow shutter for BIF

 

[SquarePeg]

Love the pose and colors in that first photo. Usually I see them in trees and you don't get a good look at their tails. Very pretty!

 

[Dean_Gretsch]

I really like the first, but would it be too much crop to take some off the top and bottom? Would you lose much sharpness?

 

[zulu42]

Love the pose and colors in that first photo. Usually I see them in trees and you don't get a good look at their tails. Very pretty!

Thank you. The photo was secondary. He gave me such a nice view, circled around me really slow about ten feet away. Wish I could capture that feeling in a photograph.

I really like the first, but would it be too much crop to take some off the top and bottom? Would you lose much sharpness?

Quality diminishes pretty fast when cropping. What do you think?

 

[SquarePeg]

Leave it. The bokeh is gorgeous!

 

[Dean_Gretsch]

Yes, SquarePeg is right...leave it!

 

[zulu42]

Thank you ! Yep, I don't complain about the bokeh from this lens or the VC! This one's 600mm hand held at 1/80!

 

[SquarePeg]

I had a Tamron 70-300 when I had my Nikon. I loved that lens. When that VC kicked in, even I could hand hold at the slower shutter speeds.

ETA I sold that lens to another field hockey mom that I know and she has been killing it with it. She is a huge Tamron fan now too.

 

[Gary A.]

The cropped for me. I love the geese.

 

[zulu42]

Thank you Gary

 

[Jeff15]

Very nice shooting.....

 

[Jeff G]

Agree with Gary, I prefer the cropped, and the three amigos shot is very nice as well.

 

[zulu42]

Very nice shooting.....

Thanks Jeff!

Agree with Gary, I prefer the cropped, and the three amigos shot is very nice as well.

Thank you. I'm terrible at titling photos, but The Three Amigos is perfect!

 

[DSP121]

Very pretty images. The pose of that bird is awesome and its feathers colors are so beautiful.

 

[zulu42]

Very pretty images. The pose of that bird is awesome and its feathers colors are so beautiful.

Thank you very kindly