northern harrier

[Charles Senkus]

f/5.6, 1/500 shutter iso 400

[George DeCamp]

Beautiful bird and caught at a good time with good eye contact. Like the colors but could use a little more detail in the feathers.

[Jim Poor]

This has almost the same exact look and feel to it as your last one. I wonder if there is a camera setting or something in the processing that makes them look this way. It is almost as if there has been a mild water color filter applied or something.

Real nice pose and colors, but I don't know why it looks so "smooth." How big a crop is this?

[Charles Senkus]

50%crop-i'm trying to figure out what i'm doing wrong took some pics of a sparrow yesturday -about 10 shooting raw + l jpeg and got 4 that were usable--thats 2 raw and 2 of the same as a jpeg from the car resting on the door at 1/1000 shutter?i expected proformance from the 100-400L not as good but closer to the proformance i get from my 70-200 2.8Lis i guess not and i'm wondering about the focus on my new 40D also---bout ready to throw the whole thing out in the street and run over it!!!

[Jim Poor]

<<< knows nothing about Canon :( From your sparrow outing it looks like you're running at a 40% + keeper rate which is pretty good from what I've seen. What sort of processing did you do on it? There is a distinct white frame around the upper edge.

How does it look straight from the camera? Does Canon have something like "picture control" where you set options for in camera processing such as "vivid" "high contrast" etc?

[Steve Large]

Hi Charles,
If it were me I wouldn't blame the 40D. Had the same trouble with my 100-400L and it hasn't left the kit bag since. Also ran into another guy in the field yesterday with similar problems and advised him to go with a prime lens all the way. My 500mm f/4 is amazing and takes pics like you think you should have from this kind of high end equipment. I think you would probably even be farther ahead with a 300mm F/4 and a 1.4X on it.
By the way, the picture is still pretty darn good and I don't think that I got that kind of result ever from my 100-400L

Cheers,

Steve Large

[Charles Senkus]

Hi Charles,
If it were me I wouldn't blame the 40D. Had the same trouble with my 100-400L and it hasn't left the kit bag since. Also ran into another guy in the field yesterday with similar problems and advised him to go with a prime lens all the way. My 500mm f/4 is amazing and takes pics like you think you should have from this kind of high end equipment. I think you would probably even be farther ahead with a 300mm F/4 and a 1.4X on it.
By the way, the picture is still pretty darn good and I don't think that I got that kind of result ever from my 100-400L

Cheers,

Steve Large


I just got this lens back from cannon. I was useing it on a 20D, haven't had it that long, on the 20 i was having a terrible time with it. I thought maby it was the 20 so i figured it was time and bought the 40 have only had it a couple weeks but it has been better but not really what i expected. It focuses sharply on hard targets but on birds? Would love to have a 500 but$$$$ still might take the plunge to something big- was kind of leaning toward the 400-2.8 because it is a faster piece of glass and thought it would be better all aroundbut $$$$ wish i had a bigger bank account!!! Will also post full frame orig. as soon as i can --can't post for 48hrs. - for you to look at jim. thanks for all the comments and help all!!!!! chuck

[Charles Senkus]

here is the full image

[Jim Poor]

Wow, I'm a little confused now, but I'll see if I can wrap my head around it. I think the bird actually looks better / less smoothed out at this size.

I'm tempted to say that the crop was too much and accentuated little imperfections in the original, but when I go look at the first post, the eye looks really sharp to me.:confused:

Maybe some of the big guns can help more than I. . .

[Fabs Forns]

The eye looks sharp on the crop, but there' s a big sharpening halo around the bird.
I think it's too heavy a crop, plus the original looks like the wrong white balance was used, it could use some warming.

I have tried something here, adding canvas at the front, but I would not try and make this anything other that an environmental flight to avoid loosing detail in the plumage. Since you captured it in RAW, before you convert it, check our other white balance. I used Color Balance and then a warming filter in PS. I'm sure working with the WHite Balance in the original file will yield much better results.

[Charles Senkus]

thanks all for the help!!! chuck