African Fish Eagle

[Chris van Rooyen]

Another image from my recent trip to the Okavango. I decided to experiment with the 500/4 hand-held when baiting the eagles with fish, and I was quite pleased with the results. The bokeh on the 500 is magnificent, but the trick is not to cut off wing tips, which happens easily... Comments and suggestions always welcomed.

Camera Model: NIKON D3
Date/Time: 2009:10:21 07:28:54
Shutter speed: 1/2000 sec
Aperture: 5.6
Exposure mode: Manual
Exposure compensation: -1/3
Flash: Off
Metering mode: Multi-segment
ISO: 320
Lens: 500mm hand-held
Focal length: 500mm

[Marc Mol]

Beautiful in flight image Chris, magic early light, great pose & HA, nice and sharp too.
Only nit might be a touch of blue cast on the whites, on my cal monitor.

[Tony Whitehead]

Excellent timing, Chris. Lovely eye level view. Light is great and I like the shadow of the head on the wing. DOF covers the whole bird well. BG is very complementary. Unsure what is causing the pale curved horizontal lines in the right upper corner.

[Ofer Levy]

Excellent capture! Perfect light, sharp with excellent detail - awesome work!

[Clement Francis]

One amazing shot of this magnificiant bird of prey, I love the eye and the way the bird is holding the fish

[Chris van Rooyen]

Thanks for the comments guys! Tony those are OOF reeds. Marc, I do not seem to have the blue cast on my monitor?

[Tony Whitehead]

Thanks for the comments guys! Tony those are OOF reeds. Marc, I do not seem to have the blue cast on my monitor?
Thanks, Chris. Colour looks fine on my monitor.

[arash_hazeghi]

Awesome pose, HA and wing position. light is soft and HA is perfect. There is prey and bird is sharp, all on money. I do see a subtle warmish blue cast on whites. How big of a crop was this?

[Danny Laredo]

Fantastic capture for both of you. Love the light detail and colors.

[David Fletcher]

Fabulous shot Chris. Tack sharp and enough dof for entire bird. reeds noticed, but no reason for issues there. Love the water drops. All round pretty cool and would love to have one of these, so you have to go on my wish list..... :)

[Kiran Poonacha]

too good sir, loved the action frozon the setting is good and the fish put it over the top. congrats..

[Jan Wegener]

killer image. But I also see the blue cast on the whites and the blacks of the wing. Quite heavily actually.

[Chris van Rooyen]

The comments about the blue cast are intriguing. In my experience a slight blue "cast" in shadows in early morning or late afternoon light is to be expected?

[Axel Hildebrandt]

The comments about the blue cast are intriguing. In my experience a slight blue "cast" in shadows in early morning or late afternoon light is to be expected?

I like the sharpness, angle and BG. I've never seen this species but I see a color cast, too. It's more turquoise than blue on my monitor.

[Jim Buescher]

I also see a green/blue cast on my monitor, otherwise an outstanding image.

[Chris van Rooyen]

Clearly time to recalibrate my monitor:-) thanks for the comments guys, appreciated!

[Stu Bowie]

Chris, you certainly have your FE images sorted with regards to them catching fish. I like the light and sharpness. Well captured.

[paul leverington]

WOW!! This looks spectacular Chris. What a beautiful bird and great capture by you. You might increase the contrast a tad to bring out more detail in the white and the brown but other than that picture perfect. Color cast problem mentioned--I see it too. Way to go-- I love it!!

Paul

[Karl Egressy]

Beautiful shot of this great looking eagle, Chris.

[Jan Fourie]

great inflight shot chris with nice posture ,comp and eye contact
jan

[Gyorgy Szimuly]

Apart from the cast this is a stunning image. The details I see here is outstanding.
Well done Chris and Nikon :D

Szimi