Eastern Marsh Harrier Head On

[John Wright]

It has been a while since favourable weather and a morning off lined up together, but last Saturday things fell into place nicely and I set up my blind to try to get closer shots of harriers. This Eastern Marsh Harrier haunted the reeds in front of my blind several times, providing plenty of photo ops! :)

Canon EOS 7D, EF300mm f/2.8L IS USM, 1.4x TC, Gitzo GT3531 Mountaineer tripod, Gitzo GH3780QR ballhead, AmeriStep Doghouse Blind

1/640 sec at f/5.6; ISO 160

Slightly cropped, NR, shadow lightening, sharpening using LR3/PSE9

[Randy Stout]

John:

Intense hunting pose, looking for his meal.
Placing him high in the frame does give the sense of him soaring above, looking down for prey.
I like the choice of placing him slightly to the right in the frame.

For flight shots, I would try to get the shutter speed up to at least 1/1000s, and some of the folks try for at least 1/1500s or higher. You had lots of ISO to play with here.

The overhead lighting does make getting enough light under the wings a challenge. Softer light on a hazy day or early in the day can help. Shooting with snow on the ground to act as fill light also helps.

Cheers

Randy

[John Wright]

Thanks Randy - it was actually fairly early morning, but it doesn't take long for the sun to get high enough to place the undersides of the wings in shadow in this kind of soaring pose....

I am curious - I usually use aperture priority (f/5.6 or f/7.1) and keep an eye on the shutter speed; is it better to use shutter priority instead and set it at 1/1000 sec or 1/1500 sec? I usually use auto ISO if the weather is bright enough. Also, the exposure was +2/3 EV...

Cheers,

John

[Stu Bowie]

Good soaring pose John, and I like the slight head turn surveying the ground for his next meal. With regards to ss, if you base yourself on ISO 400 in aperture priority in good light, you come away with around 1/2500 or higher with an aperture of F/5.6. At a distance, 5.6 wont make any difference to your DOF.

[Randy Stout]

Thanks Randy - it was actually fairly early morning, but it doesn't take long for the sun to get high enough to place the undersides of the wings in shadow in this kind of soaring pose....

I am curious - I usually use aperture priority (f/5.6 or f/7.1) and keep an eye on the shutter speed; is it better to use shutter priority instead and set it at 1/1000 sec or 1/1500 sec? I usually use auto ISO if the weather is bright enough. Also, the exposure was +2/3 EV...

Cheers,

John

John:

I shoot about 98% of the time in manual, so I am in complete control of my shooting parameters. Esp. if the birds are flying against varied backgrounds, once you get the exposure set for the bird on manual, the meter won't be fooled by going from light to dark background. I am always juggling the ISO to give me the lowest possible ISO, consistent with enough shutter speed and aperture to do the job. I will always trade a bit of noise for no motion blur, if light is that poor.

Cheers

Randy

[Doug Brown]

For flight, I set my base ISO at 400. That usually gives me the ability to stop down to somewhere in the f/5.6 to f/8 range and keeps my shutter speed sufficiently fast for a given species. The minimal improvement you get in noise by shooting at ISO 160 is easily fixed using NR in post, but you can never really fix OOF frames that suffer from too slow shutter speeds.

In this frame, there's a bit too much sky; I'd trim a little canvas off the top and bottom.

[John Wright]

Thanks for the comments, everyone! :)

[Ed Grella]

This capture would make a nice pano!