SOme big birds from this morning

[Infinite_Day]

So - we got to the nest early and it was still really foggy. Managed to get within about 75 yds. of the nest and sat on the train tracks. The fog eventually burned off and I should have stopped down to f/8 or so but didn't and shot these at f/5.6. I think a bit smaller aperture would have helped to make them a bit sharper so I wouldn't have had to sharpen them with the Nikon software and end up with some noise after the crops. Wish I had Photoshop so I could de-noise the photos some. Not sure how much it would help. Anyway - some of these came out well. I got about ten solid shots. Nothing stellar but they didn't come into the nest from our side. Any thoughts, suggestions, critique is welcome! Hope you enjoy.

1.)

DSC_3950_01 by Infinite Day, on Flickr

2.)

DSC_3933_01 by Infinite Day, on Flickr

3.)

DSC_3927_01 by Infinite Day, on Flickr

4.)

DSC_3930_01 by Infinite Day, on Flickr

5.)

DSC_3926_01 by Infinite Day, on Flickr

 

[Infinite_Day]

My eagle shots were so awesome they rendered everyone speechless! Nice!

 

[J_T]

I all the shots after the first. Although I think you lost some detail due to the underexposure (shadow) under the wings. My favourite would be the last one where the eagle's wing is visable and it's a overal nicer action shot.

The first one is just too busy. Too many branches and the subject is blocked.

 

[Infinite_Day]

Thanks for the comments, J_T. I thought about cropping in the first one closer and it looks better that way but I also like to have the nest in the shot so you get a sense of scale for how big it is (the nest). I would also have liked to pull more detail from under the wings in the shadow areas but exposing for that would have blown out the whites completely and I wanted feather detail in the head. Even if I had a good speed light I doubt they would have agreed to come close enough for me to use some fill light to correct that!

 

[jriepe]

As far as the flying eagles I feel the crops are too tight and some of the shadows could have been lightened up with image editing software. Other than that in my opinion the flying eagle shots are very nice. You mentioned noise reduction software. I use stand alone Noiseware and in most cases it does a great job but in some images it will cause loss of detail. But I could probably get around that if I would learn to use it better instead of always on the default mode. In some images I notice no loss of detail whatsoever. When it is a choice of no noise or more detail I will keep the images with a little noise with more detail.

Jerry

 

[Joel_W]

Out of your flying pictures, I prefer picture #1 as the curve of the wings just makes this shot special. As for Picture one, unfortunately, it's just too busy. At 1st I didn't even see the Eagle. A tighter crop would certainly help, as there isn't much you can do about the foreground branches and twigs.

 

[J_T]

Thanks for the comments, J_T. I thought about cropping in the first one closer and it looks better that way but I also like to have the nest in the shot so you get a sense of scale for how big it is (the nest). I would also have liked to pull more detail from under the wings in the shadow areas but exposing for that would have blown out the whites completely and I wanted feather detail in the head. Even if I had a good speed light I doubt they would have agreed to come close enough for me to use some fill light to correct that!

True, I'm convinced animals work in a league against us...lol

 

[Infinite_Day]

As far as the flying eagles I feel the crops are too tight and some of the shadows could have been lightened up with image editing software. Other than that in my opinion the flying eagle shots are very nice. You mentioned noise reduction software. I use stand alone Noiseware and in most cases it does a great job but in some images it will cause loss of detail. But I could probably get around that if I would learn to use it better instead of always on the default mode. In some images I notice no loss of detail whatsoever. When it is a choice of no noise or more detail I will keep the images with a little noise with more detail.

Jerry

Unfortunately, a lot of the crops were dictated, to a point, by where the birds were in the frame of the original shot. It's hard to get them centered in frame when shooting while tracking with a hand held 300mm f/4 with a 1.4TC. My technique isn't the greatest yet. I need to get good editing software so I can work on bringing out details in the shadows a bit better. I have a crop of the shot with the nest landing that is tighter and thus less busy.