American Kestrel

[arash_hazeghi]

This image is from a few years ago, it was a lucky shot as the kestrel was balancing himself against the wind giving me the opportunity to snap a frame. This was my first keeper flight frame with the EOS 1D MKIV which remains my fav. camera to date.

I hope you like it

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1D4 700mm f/7.1 1/800sec ISO400. This was the time I was experimenting with the settings thus the low ss.

[Shawn Zierman]

That is a sick (meaning very cool!) fight pose of this handsome fellow.
Great background to show the falcon against.
For impact, a suggestion would be to crop tighter, trimming some off the top and left hand side.

[Karl Egressy]

Great flight shot, Arash. Love the head turn, wing position, especially the close wing, and the background.
As Shawn mentioned a tighter crop might work better. I would have less space on the top and more space on the bottom and definately less space in front and back.

[Ken Watkins]

Arash,

Stupendous image, the angles are all great, even the S/S has worked out giving a pleasing motion blur

[Miguel Palaviccini]

What's not to like? I think a faster shutter speed would have helped a bit, but there's nothing wrong with the blurred wing tip - especially not when the rest is so darn sharp!

[Satish Ranadive]

Fabulous flight pose captured.Love the HA, great details and tail feathers.

Regards,
Satish.

[Andrew Merwin]

A beautiful image of a beautiful bird.

[Stu Bowie]

Hi Ari, love the extended near wing, head turn and eye contact, and Im impressed with the sharpness at the ss. The colours of the Kestrel look good, and overall, pops so well from the BG.

Its fun to go back on older images.:w3

[Bill Dix]

Such tough birds to capture. This is lovely, with great dorsal view, fanned tail, look-back glance.

[Richard Unsworth]

Its A wonderful shot, hope I can get the Little Kestrels living near to my soon to be house in Portugal come October!
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[Morkel Erasmus]

great exposure against a perfect BG
I like the blurry wings, shows the speed of these guys
head angle is great too

[Michael Libbe]

Beautiful! Would love to have one like this. Love that BG!

[dankearl]

You are the master of getting the head turn and eye contact.
An extremely tough subject, Very nice work!

[Ofer Levy]

Lovely pose and light. Sharp with good eye contact. Can't see fine detail though.

[Robert Holguin]

Excellent flight of a very difficult bird to near to. Love the pose and great background.
Well done.

[arash_hazeghi]

thanks guys, this image was taken when I was experimenting with the MK4. I was testing how it could handle tight crops, and the photo was a very tight crop (about 7% area). You can see the full frame image below. It was impressive that the rig held focus and delivered such pixel-level sharpness. Of course this should not be a standard practice as the fine feather details will be lacking and image cannot be presented on a large screen or in a print. I usually delete these files right away in the field but I kept this one for my iphone wallpaper!


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[Ken Watkins]

Arash,

That you got your OP from the above is remarkable, very fine processing!

[Shawn Zierman]

Holy lord I can't believe that the OP looks so good cropped that large!
Really incredible.

[Ofer Levy]

I think my guess was 5-10% of the full frame....wasn't it???:w3

[mohammad reza shahab]

hi Dear arash
Great flight shot.Lovely pose and light.

[Sanjeevprakash]

Arash,Thats a huge crop and the IQ has retained magnificantilly.This goes on to show that the technique is more important than the equipment.Great work.TFS

[arash_hazeghi]

thank you all for the nice comments

[nrohrbacker]

Arash, this is the shot I have been looking to get for some time. Great cropping ability on the MK4 when you nail the focus. beautiful shot.