White-tailed kite with vole

I got this today -- wish it were more of an environmental portrait, but thought I'd toss it out anyway.

Canon 5D Mk III, 600mm II. Big Gitzo with Wimberley II. ISO 800, f/4.5, 1/5000 sec. I don't think I needed all that shutter speed and might have gone to a smaller aperture, but at the small size it was in the frame I had enough DOF anyway. Didn't have time to change the ISO -- had just been shooting some with backlight when this one materialized. I'm lucky I got on it.

Basic LR tonal adjustments then to PS CS 6 for a very low touch of Nik Detail Extractor, and added a little canvas on top. No sharpening beyond the LR default and no noise reduction. This is a big crop -- 14% of the original frame. I get a higher percentage of sharp images of BIF with the straight 600 instead of adding the 1.4X, although I'd certainly like more pixels on the subject.

Very nice flight shot, Diane. Love the eye and the pray in the talons makes it even more interesting.

Diane:

The vole adds a lot, yes to a bit more dof.

The large crop is showing up in the IQ a bit, and some diffuse artifacts in the bg (chroma noise?)

I would probably sharpen the bird a bit more, esp the head and eye.

Cheers

Randy

Hi Diane. Always fun to capture an image of a WTK with prey. As a general rule, I never use default LR sharpening as my only sharpening. A little extra USM in Photoshop makes all the difference in the world. Likewise, I always run NR on the BG; this becomes particularly important when you ISO is 800 or greater and your crop is large. I agree with your self assessment regarding the choice of SS and aperture. It's rare that you need 1/5000 to get a sharp BIF; 1/2500 or 1/3200 is usually plenty.

What a great opportunity these kites have been for you, Diane. It's amazing how well this image held up with such a large crop. Nice light and great to get that nice eye and the prey.

I see you mentioned that you are not getting as sharp flight shots with the 1.4TC. I had the same issue when I first got my 500 and used it with TC's and it was operator rather than equipment issues. I handled it by going to the beach and BIF technique on terns in flight until I felt comfortable with the long lens and TC's on a tripod. Now I am even managing some flight shots with the 2.0 TC that are sharp. Unfortunately, I don't have the strength at this time (like Doug & Arash) to HH the long lens with TC's.

Lots of issues raised here already. Let me comment back, and I welcome further opinions and information.

Not sure what BG "diffuse artifacts" means. The top ~5% is added and Content-Aware fill did give some slight posterization-type artifacts, as it almost always does. I did a Curves layer, pulled in both ends strongly and changed it to Luminosity mode to really see the oddities and cloned them out with a fairly hard-edged brush, (to avoid softening any texture that was there with the partial opacity of the brush edges). The BG was clean enough that Neat Image returned a flat profile and could do nothing to improve anything. I selected the BG and did PS's NR filter with no detectable difference. Also cleaned up some diffuse darker areas around part of the lower wing. The very thin darker "halo" along the leading edge of the top wing is in the raw file, which has had very minimal adjustments.

I did go back to the file and tried sharpening the PS file, and compared that to increasing LR's sharpening slider, and the latter showed less artifacts. (It and other LR adjustments are done in LAB mode, so should cause fewer artifacts than sharpening in PS or on a JPEG.) So I reprocessed the image from that sharper starting file and it is somewhat improved.

For all the cropping here (this is close to a 100% view), the noise seems very low to me, and I can't find any in the BG.

Part of today's shooting was to see if very high SS's made any improvement in IQ. Answer: no. So I have now set Tv at 1/3200 and will let the aperture close down as it can. I can't often go below ISO 800 but will if/when I can.

I have shot obsessively with this lens for about 4 months now. I had used the 300 f/2.8 with a 2x living on it, for several years before. If the problem is operator error, I'd love to find out in what way. I have tried many suggested variations of parameters, with little improvement. I really think the 5D3 is just not capable of driving the AF fast enough on this lens with the 1.4x on (f/5.6). The only other issue I see is that at 840mm it is more difficult to keep a bird centered in the frame than at 600, but in many cases the focus drifts off even when the bird remains centered and is just quietly gliding, not flapping wings. I have tried all the AF cases and various focus point selections, and done everything to stabilize the rig; today I strapped a pair of exercise ankle weights to the hood and camera end of the lens. It did give a very nice feeling of a damped head such as is used for video, but I'm not so sure of the wisdom of having the extra stress on the lens mount.

One curious observation: focus seems to lock onto a smaller (more distant) bird more readily than a bird that is larger in the frame. Fewer focus points to compare to make a decision?

It's not that I can't ever get a sharp shot, but rather that what I consider too many shots show the focus drifting off, sometimes badly. It's hard to see in the viewfinder, but I have both release priority settings on focus, and when the burst stutters I know to hit the focus button again. But it drifts more than I want before the camera thinks it has lost focus. This happens even at f/4 but is worse at f/5.6.

I just can't see springing for a 1DX now, but will probably have myself convinced by the time a successor comes out.

Hi Diane. Many folks process the bird and the BG separately in PS; sharpen the bird and noise reduce the BG. LR does a serviceable job, but it's no replacement for PS IMO. There is a significant amount of BG noise in your frame, and selective NR will help. The 5D3, while no 1Dx, is one of the best autofocusing cameras that Canon's ever made; it should be able to handle a 600 with a 1.4x and give you excellent results (I own the 5D3 and the 600 II, so I speak from experience).

BIF takes a lot of practice; I find that operator inexperience/error is the cause of consistently soft images in most cases. Have you considered a flight photography workshop to help hone your BIF skills? I think you'd be amazed at how much improvement you'd see in your BIF shots with a little coaching in the field. Shameless plug....I'll be co-leading a BIF workshop in So. Cal. in a week and a half (along with Jim Neiger and guest instructor Arash Hazeghi), and still have an opening or two.

Diane,
Nice PP discussion.
I think the bird looks fine with the crop you had.
It is hard to get a very sharp photo with a large crop, not enough pixels left, I think.
There is an easy fix to NR noise in a featureless blue sky.
Instead of NR, just use a blur. There are no features anyway and Gaussion Blur will get rid of any noise on a BG
like this.
I am not a photoshop person so I get lost in the terms.
I use NX2, just crop for comp, adjust light and color, always run NR on the BG only, use USM to sharpen just the
bird as needed and that is it.
Anything more and the photo is usually not worthy of processing.
I rarely try to fix exposure anymore, if I don't get it right in camera, I just discard..
Did you say you will set the SS and let the camera decide Aperture?
You should be shooting Manual and making all decisions.
Set the ISO for conditions, Choose aperture (wide open or close to it for BIF) and dial the exposure.

I was being sloppy and now I see the noise. (This was a much bigger crop than I'd prefer, and a higher ISO.) Here's a re-post with the original BG as it came out of LR into PS; both the small amount of Detail Extractor and Smart Sharpen brought out BG noise. I have selected the BG and masked it out on those two layers.

I do use PS on almost all my images, with masked layers on virtually all of those.

I don't know how NX2 does with exposure, but there is a good amount of leeway in a raw capture in LR / ACR, for overall exposure and for both shadow and highlight detail. But that doesn't mean I feel free to be sloppy in the field. When I'm shooting something like egrets at a local rookery, both against a sky and in trees, I'm definitely in M mode. Unless I'm positioned so I'm only shooting against sky and they are flying from full sun into heavy tree shade, but still against sky. Av or Tv works very well there, giving a little more exposure on a shaded bird at the sacrifice of a somewhat overexposed sky. Today I was shooting only against sky, one minute with the sun at my back and the next toward the sun. The kites appear suddenly and are often gone in a flash; no time to make changes as my shooting direction changes. In this circumstance the camera can think faster than I can move a dial. I never have a shot in this location that is exposed beyond reasonable adjustments. But certainly there are many other cases where I'm in M mode.


But once again, I'm not talking about consistently soft images. I'm talking about the fact that AF drifts more than I want it to, and under circumstances where I don't think it should, such as a gliding bird that stays well centered, giving me more soft images than I'm happy with.

I have done the microadjustment with the LensAlign, with and without both TCs, although I wouldn't expect it to be a factor here. (It was 0 to just 1 or 2, as I recall.) And I have just found that some presumably early copies of the 600 II needed to go back to the factory for a firmware update that sounded like it might be relevant to my problem. But my serial number is not one of the affected ones.

Hi Diane.

I like the prey, good exposure, but the image is very grainy, even the re-post.

IQ issues partly come from the huge crop and partly from unoptimized processing as Doug pointed out. 14% is way too small to produce a keeper file.

For bird flying against sky BG, you should easily get 90% sharp images with the gear you are using, with or without TC, if you use the proper flight technique. IMO your keeper ratio will not improve with a 1DX or any other camera unless you improve your technique.

you need to figure out how to get closer to the kites, sometimes it is not possible and it is more productive to search for other locations where kites are more approachable rather than wasting time at a location where they are just too far.

hope this helps.

Diane, nicely exposed image, I think a lot of your reservations over image quality will overcome by making the bird about 30% smaller in the frame, it will still be clear enough to see. You may wish to consider a 1024 px image also.

Hope you get the issue straightened out, Diane. Though you've gotten some good advice here, maybe post a question in the General Photography forum?
This is still a neat capture, I really like the view of the prey, and the great view of the kite's eye. I do still see graininess and I agree that the crop may be too great in size.

This wasn't meant to be an A-list posting. I hate crops of more than 10-20%. But it generated some good information. I think another issue I have is that my monitor just doesn't show grain very well, or maybe it's my eyes. I'm learning to be more aware of it. Now looking at the final PS file at 100% more carefully.

I appreciate all the comments!

Hi Diane, great advice from above, but its still great to capture these guys in flight, especially with prey. Although the underwings show noise, the feather detail still shows up well enough.

Great pose of this nice looking bird and good that it has a prey item. I agree with the comments regarding IQ due to being cropped to much but the sharpness is improved well on the repost Diane.

Great shot.
The vole really adds a ton to this image.
Expsoed very well and love the eye.
Despite it's isuues I would be happy with a shot like this.
Well done.

Nice capture of this beautiful kite Diane. Great job with the big rig too.
The prey item in the feet adds a lot. I like that you got the red eye I also.
I agree with Arash about these shots. I look at stuff that I took years ago that I thought was good but now realized that it is grainy compared to more recent captures. The only difference is that I have learned that you have to get pretty close to your subject to get a really killer shot. If the subject doesn't fill at least 40% of the original frame then it's probably not going to crop well. Meaning it may not be noise free when you finish cropping.
Nice work.

I completely agree about the value of getting close, and I work hard to do it when I can. When I can't get close enough, even with a super-telephoto, I'll compromise some. But I do recognize when it's a compromise.

Thanks for all the comments!