Swainson's Hawk

[WillieHall]

Been away for awhile, but more free time now to get used to my new 7D II and 100-400 II lens. This is a hawk not commonly seen in our area so I was thrilled for one to land close by with the sun at a decent angle! I had been shooting in the shade and forgot to lower the ISO....live and learn.

1/2000, f/7.1, ISO 1250, 400mm, hand held, 5% cropped off for composition and converted with DPP ⅓ stop darker.

Looking forward to comments and critique. Anyone know when David Bosch's guide for this camera will be out?

[Diane Miller]

Hi Willie,

Good to have you back! This is a very nice shot of a gorgeous bird -- good light, great detail and color, good pose, nice perch. My only suggestion would be to darken the legs a little.

I think you'll love that body and lens -- I'm having a lot of fun with it. I frequently have the 1.4X on mine. It's not the best in focus speed and accuracy for birds in flight (although it can be used) but is really quite nice for a posing subject. Even with the small "crop" sensor, I often want more than 400mm.

I don't remember what your previous body was, but the number of focus points on the 7D2 gives more coverage than anything I've used before, so you have more ability to put the focus point on the most important part of the image. For a still subject I usually use the point that is a small square, and don't use the 4 or 8 surrounding points if I need tight control of the focus point. The helper points can cover a larger area than it looks like, and can latch onto detail in an area that might be out of the desired plane of focus.

[Warren Spreng]

Love the angle of the head and detail in the eye, he looks inquisitive! I agree with Diane on darkening the legs a little.

[WillieHall]

Thanks Dianne for the comments, I also got the 1.4 III teleconverter. I find it really helps to use it on a tripod or monopod and not for flight shots. Warren and Dianne, is there a simple way to darken legs, I see that bright yellow has a little too much light on it.

[Diane Miller]

As a user of Lightroom / ACR, I would have done as much as possible (which is a lot) in the raw converter. See my tutorial here, in the Educational Resources section: http://www.birdphotographers.net/forums/showthread.php/120010-Pulling-out-detail-in-whites. This is the same for any bright area, not just whites.

Once tonalities are brought into PS (including Elements) it isn't easy to recover detail in bright areas because the tonal range is set in concrete, unlike in the raw converter where you have a lot more overhead to work with. Masking the feet is the best strategy. You can paint a quick mask by hand, convert it to a selection and make a Curves adjustment that will be masked by your selection:

http://www.birdphotographers.net/forums/showthread.php/117406-Making-Local-Adjustments-in-Adobe-Photoshop-using-Quick-Mask-Mode

Or use Nik's Viveza, which can do uncanny masking, and had an assortment of adjustments built in. Wish I could cite a good tutorial for it. The key is, after you click a point and make the initial adjustment, you make several "neutral" adjustment points around it, to undo the adjustment that extended out to surrounding areas.

[Sandy Witvoet]

Well done, Willie! Great pose, lovely BG, excellent HA. Beautiful hawk!

[Don Lacy]

Hi Willie, Really nice pose and composition here. The lighting of the legs can be done several ways depending on your PS skills you can use the dodge tool or a curves layer adjustment and paint in the effect using the brush tool. If you know how to make selections then a simple selection and curve adjustment would also work. I would also lighten the area around the eye and cheek. The image does have one major flaw and that is it is soft lacking detail not sure if it happen at the time of capture or if you ran any noise reduction on it but there is no acuteness to the feather detail that one would see from a sharp image. Did you run any NR on it?

[WillieHall]

thanks Don, I did not run any NR on this. I did take the photo hand held at an odd angle out the open window of my truck and was hoping the high shutter speed would compensate for any shake on my part....maybe it didn't. Also forgot to lower the ISO because I had been in the shade prior to this and noise may be taking away from better feather detail. (?) Thanks for the comments, always learning.

[Don Lacy]

Was the truck running I often see people shooting out of a running vehicle which you should not do as the vibrations from the engine or the heat coming off of it will soften the image. It not noise I pulled the image into PS to see if all it needed was some extra sharpening and none of my sharpening routines worked which indicates blur or missed focus to me as I did not see alot of noise in the image. Was this shot n raw and if so which program did you use to convert the file.

[WillieHall]

Yeah, I know about engine running, it was off. RAW converted with DPP4. I think I was twisted at such an odd angle to get the shot I must have had just enough wiggle to reduce sharpness. I had a tripod and monopod handy, but have seen birds spook so many times with the opening of a vehicle door I just tried to make the best of it. It is a rare bird in this area so I am happy to have captured a "decent" image.

[Don Lacy]

Yeah, I know about engine running, it was off. RAW converted with DPP4. I think I was twisted at such an odd angle to get the shot I must have had just enough wiggle to reduce sharpness. I had a tripod and monopod handy, but have seen birds spook so many times with the opening of a vehicle door I just tried to make the best of it. It is a rare bird in this area so I am happy to have captured a "decent" image.
Sometime thats all we get:S3: