Another Red Kite

[Iain Barker]

I have previously posted some of my Kite pictures in Eager to learn and have tried to put in place some of the suggestions when processing this image.

Nikon D7000 300mm f4 AF ED. 1/500 sec f5.6 ISO 160. Crop levels curve and sharpening in Lightroom. I have tried to lighten the underwing slightly in Photoshop.

[Daniel Cadieux]

You have best you could with the light coming from above the subject. Just enough translucence to make it interesting on the wings. Tough to get BIFs sharp at that shutter speed...looks good for web. I imagine you meant ISO 1600?

[Iain Barker]

Hi Daniel
Thanks for the comments. This was ISO 160.
This was taken a few months ago but I have only just got round to precessing it. At the time I had only just got the D7000 an was getting use to the settings. I was using aperture priority with +/- compensation to get the correct exposure. I had auto iso selected but only with max shutter of 1/500. Now I realise I can take the ISO quite high and use at least 1/1000 sec for birds in flight.

[arash_hazeghi]

nice catch the main issue here is the steep angle and poor light. The image was underexposed and as a result there is no detail in the darks, tough conditions hope you will find him in a better situation next time.

ISO 160 is not the right choice for flight, it doesn't give you enough shutter speed.

[Iain Barker]

Thanks for the feedback Arash

You are correct the bird was virtually overhead when I took the shot and getting the correct exposure was difficult against the bright cloudy sky. The ISO was set to auto and I would now use a faster shutter speed if taking this shot again.

Would anyone do anything differently with the processing? These shots are the only red kite shots I have and I am try to make the best I can of them.

[arash_hazeghi]

Hi Iain,

it would be tough to recover in post if the original was underexposed. you can raise exposure in RAW and then try to battle the noise with NR, but it generally results in poor results especially with small-sensor cameras