White-bellied Sea Eagles

[Colin Driscoll]

This pair were into a courtship display and came out of nowhere near straight for me at high speed. I wasn't expecting them so it was a quick point and shoot hoping settings would be OK.
Turns out they were. A real test of the R5 eye detect and it was all to sudden, and probably confusing, for it so there was a large AF point over part of both birds.
R5 EF600 f4 III 1.4x III 840 mm HH
1/3200 f5.6 iso1600
ACR lower exposure PS2022 Curves S&H Neat Image 9 Sharpen about 50% crop

[Ian McLachlan]

Thats a bit of fun.If you know where the nest is likely to be this year you could be in for some more closer to xmas when they are still feeding the young.I like this soft BG for these birds .Is this at 20 fps if so have you any with the birds just separated.I think your center of focus seems to be about the second birds face so youccan't do much better. Is this at 1/3200 and what is wide open 5.6 or 6.3 on that set up. Have you seen them doing the feet grab spiral while courting .I reckon that's a shot still to be cracked by someone.

[Colin Driscoll]

Thanks Ian and for reminding me that I had forgotten to add the settings, fixed now. 5.6 is wide open with the 1.4x.
Yes 20 fps but they weren't separated in the brief time I had. I just liked getting both clean faces.
Yes I have seen them in the feet grab and hope to get a chance at that shot soon. My advantage is that this was from my top deck so I just need to keep watching with the camera ready.
Haven't found the nest yet but will keep looking.

[Steve Kaluski]

Certainly a better image Colin, albeit the wing through the second bird is a no no for me. The bird behind appears sharper for some strange reason and I would up the BLUE, not cyan (4-5 not much more) in the Colour balance just to punch up the sky a fraction more, but you have to mask the birds out. I might have forgot ED and just grabbed the birds as they should be sharp with the right DoF.

Will await your save for web details Colin to see if we can improve, but if you are heavily cropping you will loose stuff.

TFS
Steve

[Daniel Cadieux]

I love the head tilt of the far bird. Just a bit less merge would have been ideal, but still not fatal here. More sharpening to the front bird's face would be great. Another tool I love to punch up colours, especially backgrounds, is the sponge tool - use a large soft brush (30% opacity) and paint in some saturation. Need to be judicious though.

[Colin Driscoll]

Thanks for the tips and observations. At 20fps I got 5 frames from when they appeared and sped over the top of me, so 0.25 sec all up.
They were separate in the first frame only but wings were pulled back with the rest of the frames overlapping.
The BG was all cloud, no blue sky so it was as portrayed with a storm blue/gray high layer.
A <50% crop should not be heavy cropping for R5 raw images IMO, just back to FF for my 1DXIII.

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Colin, OK, so the camera is set correctly, Software is also now correct and good to go, so looking for some cool postings, no pressure. :bg3:

Seriously I knew it had to be something simple, so you should find things a lot easier and IQ dramatically improves, however just check that setting you changes is embedded and it doesn’t default for the next few images, but also whenever there is an update. Rarely it happens but some settings default ie ‘Colour Settings’ or Assign’ all under Edit, but Save for Legacy is more stable.