White-Tailed Eagle

Photographed in early February from a tour boat baiting the eagles off the coast of Rausu, Hokkaido, JP. Wish I had stopped down for that one...

Best, JR

Canon 1DMkIV, 500F4IS, 1/2000s, F4, ISO 400, Manual Exposure, Handheld

JR, what an image. stunning. great details, pose, angle, BG, comp, feel, exp....loved it. I am fine with the DOF..stopping down might have deteriorated the BG, right? the amount of blur seems perfect here.

I really like the background as well. The eagle is so sharp and the background is very soft and soothing.

Tack sharp Joerg, and you have captured excellent feather detail. The DOF is spot on, and I like how the eagle is perched on a mound of snow.

Awesome shot Joerg excellent detail and composition.

What a majestic looking bird and dangerous looking talons. Nice exposure with great plumage detail and eye contact.

Thank you all for your kind comments. I think that stopping down wouldn't have altered the background too much. In a perfect world I would have also the tail feathers in focus. Still I am very happy as is. :S3:

JR

Joerg, I think the DOF is just fine for this image. I'm not sure f5.6 would have made that big a difference for the bird and going further certainly would have started to change the background. In short, it looks great to me. Great exposure as well.

Cheers,
Greg Basco

awesome 3D feel here Joerg! nice clarity too and DOF works fine for me

Thanks Greg & Morkel. Much appreciated. JR

Killer details, nice eye contact and the ice around adds greatly here...

I'm also in the "DOF is just fine" camp. Nice wintery feel, and how nice of this fella to perch atop the ice flow for you. Great pose and view of those big talons.

I absolutely love this image. The bird looks very majestic, handsome and powerful. This image almost has a 3D effect which makes me feel I'm right there. DOF looks perfectly fine to me too.
Wonderful work. Thanks for sharing.

Kiran, Daniel & Sidharth,

Thanks for your very kind feedback. JR

The snow and the bg sure make a stunning contrast to the Eagle. Lovely shot, excellent light. Was this cropped very much? I might have expected to see a bit more feather detail with a bare 500 and a MK4.

Awesome shot Joerg
TFS

Thank you both.

Art, the image is about 60% of the original pixel area. No noise reduction or similar was done to the image and the head is sharp at 100%. Not sure what's going on but other Eagle images I took show a similar level of detail - or lack thereof. JR