Green Heron landing

[laurie golden]

I have spent four mornings with a family of green herons and finally got a sunny day. Still trying for the perfect action shot but they are to fast or I am to slow. This shot is of a heron that was returning to his perch after diving into the water. I got him half out of the water and two shots in the air but the shots in mid-air were not sharp. Here he is just about to land with his fish. In the original photo the bird was to far to the right and to low so I added a little canvas on the bottom and right from the next photo the cropped on the left and top.

Nikon D800, 500mm f4 lens plus 1.4 converter for 700mm
ISO 640, f8, 1/800 sec
Manual Exposure

[Randy Stout]

Laurie:

Love the action, landing, fish flapping, wings out. Well exposed. Nice job adding the canvas. Face a little blurred from motion. Perhaps a bit more sharpening will help a bit.

Cheers

Randy

[Jack Breakfast]

Laurie, what a whizbang! I like this very much. Here's a humble repost. The wood at picture's bottom right bothers me a little. Otherwise I think this is great. I agree with everything said by Dr Stout, although I'm fine with the sharpness as is...

[Jack Breakfast]

PS Why does my reposted image look larger than yours? Have I done something wrong? Hmmm.

[laurie golden]

Thanks Randy and Jack, I have added a little face sharpening - but not much and deleted the branch on the lower right. Does it still need more sharpening - I just did not want to over do it.

[Randy Stout]

Laurie:

Your repost is better. I think Jack got the amount of sharpening on the eye just right, and I think you can go just a bit more. Removing the knob in the LRC does help, esp. the frame is a sliver tight.

Cheers

Randy

[Robert vanMierop]

The repost is great, but the original wasn't bad either. It's nice enough to get a good LGH shot, but landing...with prey??? Great!

[Ken Watkins]

Laurie,

This is great cannot help but agree with all of the other comments, your re-post has I think sufficient sharpness

[dankearl]

Great opportunity Laurie.
The prey is really nice to have in the photo and the landing pose is nice.
I would crank up the ISO on the D800 for much faster SS.
1600 is almost base ISO, I think, very little NR needed.

[laurie golden]

Thank you everyone for your comments.

Dan - I know I needed more speed for this shot, I was not happy with high ISO when the light was bad but I will increase it when the light is good and see what happens. I hope we have some sunshine this week!

[arash_hazeghi]

lovely landing and that fish makes it even better