Fishing Eagle

[Herb Houghton]

1D mark IV, 800 f5.6, iso 800, 1/1250, f7.1 on gitzo legs, wimberley head.

Herb

[Bryan Hix]

Awesome action! I might tone the light down a bit if you can and give a bit more room on the right if you have it. Congrats on a great capture!

[Doug Brown]

You captured some great action here Herb! Wings down, good eye contact, nice sharpness, and of course the fish. I'm not sure how your white exposure looks in the RAW file, but there's evidence burning on top of the head. There is some great information in the Tutorials forum about controlling whites. I think you could get them looking a little better if you reprocess using some of those tips.

[Daniel Cadieux]

Great pose and I love the wriggling fish and water action, very cool!! I agree some of the whites look cooked as posted and would be worth revisiting the RAW file to extract some details there (I'm sure there are some...)

[Charles Scheffold]

Great low angle Herb! Agree with the other comments that the whites a the very top of the head look a bit blown out. I'm also thinking the crop is a bit tight.

Charles

[Arthur Morris]

Hi Herb,

Where? Natural capture fish? Just checking :)

Pose including wing position look great as does the fish.

Very contrasty. The WHITEs look toasted but in Photoshop they did not show as overeposed but the bill and other highlights did. The whites of the head looked as if they had been cloned over as they were lumpy. This became more evident when I ran a Linear Burn on the WHITEs....

Here is my main concern: it surely looks like sun and it surely does not look like early or late light. Your EXP: 1/1250 sec. at f/71. at ISO 800 would seem to be way off... Way. For and eagle in bright sun you might start with ISO 400 at 1/1600 at f/8 or even darker in most situations.

How did you meter????

Did you try to recover the WHITEs during RAW conversion?

[Herb Houghton]

Thanks Bryan, Doug and Daniel for the comments. I will repost another version, with a looser crop and hopefully with some better detail in the whites. :)

[Herb Houghton]

Hi Herb,

Where? Natural capture fish? Just checking :)

Pose including wing position look great as does the fish.

Very contrasty. The WHITEs look toasted but in Photoshop they did not show as overeposed but the bill and other highlights did. The whites of the head looked as if they had been cloned over as they were lumpy. This became more evident when I ran a Linear Burn on the WHITEs....

Here is my main concern: it surely looks like sun and it surely does not look like early or late light. Your EXP: 1/1250 sec. at f/71. at ISO 800 would seem to be way off... Way. For and eagle in bright sun you might start with ISO 400 at 1/1600 at f/8 or even darker in most situations.

How did you meter????

Did you try to recover the WHITEs during RAW conversion?

Hi Artie,
Thanks for the tips and comments. The fish was somewhat of a natural capture at Conowingo Dam in Maryland. This fish may have been stunned by the turbines from the dam, as it was sideways and visible prior to capture, but it was flapping it's tail in a tree minutes later at the sycamore dining table.
I use evaluative, center weighted metering. I did try to recover whites in ACR and I did try to recover more of the whites in this repost, but this one may be to dark ?
Thanks,
Herb

[Arthur Morris]

YAW. It looks as if the WHITEs may have been beyond save-able...

Did you have any exposure compensation set for this image???

If you let us know what and how you metered, we are far better able to help you.