Sharpshinned Bird Watcher

This image was captured in our Williamsburg, Virginia backyard late in the afternoon this last March. I was using a Nikon D80 set at ISO 800, F5.6 with an 80-400mm VR lens. Light was fading quickly, but I was able to approach to within 15 feet before this hawk flew off, so this was a full frame shot.
At the time I didn't know whether to increase the ISO for a more reasonable shutter speed or to rely on a relatively stable sitting position and VR. Since the light was flat, I used matrix metering without exposure compensation.
I now think I should have had the presense of mind to zoom out to 300mm in an attempt to get a sharper image and also to switch to ISO 1600 for a few shots at 1/80.
Les Jacobi

Hi Les

The first thing that jumps at me is the white rock It sort of dominates the scene I think you could have added light to your reading You will find in that fading light the histogram will look right with a bit of light

Regarding how much ISO it would depend on how comfortable you are keeping the camera steady My rule of thumb is that noise is better than soft !!!! I like the eye level view !!!!

Neat to see! Congrats on spotting it & getting within 15 feet!

Yep, the whitish rocks jump out at me too, but that was where the bird was... If you had had time to grab a tripod, you could have potentially gotten away with even lower ISOs (but you already knew that.).

I think my preference would have been for a vertical shot here - even a vertical crop to this horizontal image would strengthen it for me.