Eye To Eye ( Common Kesterl Male.)

This is a male Kestrel bird. We spent hours with this guy during last season. This shot I got after crawling around 25 meters in two hours without disturbing him. I spotted a rock where he was coming continuously and catching insects from the grass around. At the time of this shot all of a sudden he jumped from the rock and came straight towards me, almost into my mfd. So there is not much room at the bottom and I had to crop it for portrait.

Camera gear used here is - Nikon D7000, Nikkor 400mm F2.8 VrII

Exif:- SS- 1/1250, Iso- 250, F5.6, Length- 400mm.

Thanks in advance for all important suggestions and critiques.

Rahul I cannot find anything that I would change on this super close up, colour on the bird and bg look spot on to me, very nice indeed.

Keith.

Impressive how you got that close. Very nice close up; I can see your reflection in it's eyes. Little more DOF would be a dream, but it is hard to get with the long lenses from that close. Well done.

Impressive fieldcraft and great eye contact! You needed more DOF for this frame to reach its full potential. I rarely if ever dip below ISO 400 for bird photography so that I have more ability to adjust DOF and SS. Here I would have gone with a higher ISO and a slower shutter speed in order to shoot somewhere between f/8 and f/10.

Thanks Keith and Lorant for the appreciation.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Doug Brown

Impressive fieldcraft and great eye contact! You needed more DOF for this frame to reach its full potential. I rarely if ever dip below ISO 400 for bird photography so that I have more ability to adjust DOF and SS. Here I would have gone with a higher ISO and a slower shutter speed in order to shoot somewhere between f/8 and f/10.

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Doug thanks for the suggestions but actually that time i was waiting for takeoff shot and the bird was around 25 feet away from me, as i told in my narration the bird suddenly jumped and came straight towards me in my mfd for just around 5 seconds. I agree with the settings you suggested but there was no time to change settings. Iso was the big issue for me when I was using D7000, as it was producing noise after ISO 500 and also the light that time was very harsh. So I preferred to shoot in low ISO. But surely I will try your settings in next season as there is no kestrel here right now.

Thanks and Regards
Rahul.

Excellent portrait, Rahul.

Regards,
Satish.