Close... but NO Cigar.....

[David Roach]

OK, so this is one of those times (I dream about) where the circumstances were close to perfect (but not quite); that really hooks you into this game and keeps you going! Right before I discovered my camera was going to have to be returned for the third time (a couple weeks back), I was out at Green Cay right at sunset (about 15 minutes before the sun would touch the horizon). The water level was low causing shallow pools with concentrated fish. The pool was about twice as far as optimum for my lens combo 100-400 w 1.4tc and I really wish I had my faster lens 400 F4 due to the low light conditions. The wind direction and my perfect (right on the sun) angle (no flash as I yet don't own one) allowed for great views of these beauties while fishing. The problems; Really would have needed faster and especially bigger lens!!! This is about a 40% crop. Which I assume is the reason for poor image quality (along with some noise in darker areas). Even with the poor IQ, what made this a near miss was;

natural light was beautiful, even and at the perfect angle
good view of both the lower and upper wings
those beautifully spread tail feathers
the catch light (always hard on these beauties with natural light only) and head angle
lastly, those two claws just peaking out from under the tail feathersOh, to have gotten more pixels on this beauty...... Next time...
1DMKIIN 100-400 1.4xtc ISO 800 F8@1/4000

[Steve Maxson]

I like this a lot, David - you have already listed the reasons. I think the image would look better for this web presentation if it was near the allowed 200 KB instead of only 36.1KB. I would suggest giving the bird a little more space on the top and left.

[James Salywoda]

Alittle more room at the top and left would help out I do like the interesting angle you captured here . As mentioned lack of pixels probably took away any fine details but still a very pretty shot . Thanks For Sharing....

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Thanks for sharing this image and evaluation. Aside from the compression issue, you could have gone to ISO 400 since 1/2000s would have been good enough. I'm not so sure about the crop, I would probably go with a horizontal.

[David Roach]

Yes, Axel; that was one of the mistakes I failed to mention, lower ISO thus less of a noise problem. I over compensated since I wanted to really freeze their hover behavior. I got several near great images including the dives (all had the same major problem of not enough lens. As always, thanks for the look and the learnings!!!!

[Freddy Franzella]

Great capture! love the lighting on the bird!