Peregrine Hand-off to Juvenile

[Michael Gehrisch]

Beginners luck on a peregrine feeding this summer. Closer and better light would have been nicer, but maybe next time. This is one out of a series of 5 images during the hand-off.



The rest of the series can be seen here: http://upload.pbase.com/kingfisher/birds_on_business

[Stu Bowie]

Hi Michael, a big welcome to BPN, and a great place to learn, share, and meet new friends. Good action captured here, and wish we had a better view of the head of the falcon on the left. Good wing display and fanned tail of the falcon on the right. We ask that everyone posts their shooting techs, in that way we can judge more of the image. Having said that, the image is a bit soft, so without looking at your techs, not sure why.

Please participate on commenting on other members images too.

[Randy Stout]

Michael:

Welcome to BPN, you have gotten excellent advice from Stuart. Very neat interaction. Look forward to more!

Cheers

Randy

[Arthur Morris]

Hi Michael and Welcome, Can you please post the full frame original capture along with the gear and exif info. Also, where was the image created?

[Miguel Palaviccini]

Michael, very nice timing on this image. Nice separation between the two birds as well. It looks as if this is a heavy crop, since the IQ isn't too great, but stunning timing! Look forward to seeing some more from the series.

[Satish Ranadive]

Michael:
Very nice moment captured.Nicely separated birds.Agree with Miguel about IQ.
Would like to see EXIF data also.

Regards,
Satish.

[Michael Gehrisch]

Thanks for the comments, yes it was "a long shot". If the Canon Exif data is correct the distance was 70.3 meters. 37% crop. The AF on the 1D4 struggled to keep up. I know I did!

Model	Canon EOS-1D Mark IV
Flash Used	No
Focal Length	800 mm
Exposure Time	1/2000 sec
Aperture	f/7.1
ISO Equivalent	400

[Arthur Morris]

HI MIchael, Again I ask, can you please post a JPEG that represents the full frame original capture?

[Michael Gehrisch]

Here's the full-frame version:
And apparently my orignal link to the other files in the series was incorrect. The correct link is: http://www.pbase.com/kingfisher/birds_on_business

[Arthur Morris]

Hi Again Michael, Thanks for posting the original. It looks as if you made some sort of selection on the "original" as there was pixelation around the edges of the bird.... IAC, you captured a neat moment in time, and I love the great dorsal view of the juvie and its tail, but the photograph has many short-comings:

#1: it is not accurately focused. At 1/2000 sec. it should be a lot sharper.
#2: the original appears under-exposed.
#3: as noted above, the large crop further degraded the IQ.
#4: in addition to the adult birds head being blocked, the head and face of the young bird are completely shaded.

With a bit of more selective sharpening on the image in Pane 1 it would likely look a lot better.

Thanks for sharing. Where did you create this image?

[Michael Gehrisch]

Thanks for the comments and feedback, I would just like to mention some odd behaviour of the forum thread itself. Only this morning Tues were the first three comments from Stuart, Randy, and Art visible to me. Yesterday even the stats showed me only three replies from Miguel, Satish and Art's second comment. So I was REALLY surprised when Art said "Again I ask" since his first comment was not visible to me. I checked several times on different browsers during the day and evening without ever seeing the initial responses. Not sure if this behaviour has been reported before...

In any case guilty on all counts, the entire series was poorly focussed, and under-exposed, I was using AI servo with all 45 focus points selected and med-fast tracking with AF/tracking priority, but my inability to keep the birds still in the frame resulted in only about 2 out of ten images with the right focus point selected. Considering how OOF the original image is, I don't believe there is much more that can be done getting detail ouf of the shot. Here is a 100% crop from raw with no in camera processing or pp.


I would prefer not to disclose the location since at least here in Sweden there have been problems with the theft of eggs and young from nests and this summer the poisoning of a peregrine family by covering a tame pigeon with poison.

[Arthur Morris]

Hi Michael,

re:

Thanks for the comments and feedback.

YAW

I would just like to mention some odd behaviour of the forum thread itself. Only this morning Tues were the first three comments from Stuart, Randy, and Art visible to me. Yesterday even the stats showed me only three replies from Miguel, Satish and Art's second comment. So I was REALLY surprised when Art said "Again I ask" since his first comment was not visible to me.

Sound strange to me other than to say that my first comment (in Pane 4) was posted at 1:24 eastern time which is at least 7:30pm in Sweden.


I checked several times on different browsers during the day and evening without ever seeing the initial responses. Not sure if this behaviour has been reported before...

Has not as far as I know.

In any case guilty on all counts, the entire series was poorly focused, and under-exposed.

Operator error on the under-exposure.

I was using AI servo with all 45 focus points selected and med-fast tracking with AF/tracking priority, but my inability to keep the birds still in the frame resulted in only about 2 out of ten images with the right focus point selected.

For probably more than a decade I have been advising folks not to use 45-point AF with the 1D IV for birds in flight; with distant action it is best to use the central sensor only with expand or surround--be sure to be on the far distance range setting, and then crop.

Considering how OOF the original image is, I don't believe there is much more that can be done getting detail ouf of the shot. Here is a 100% crop from raw with no in camera processing or pp.

Thanks for posting the original frame; did you see my comments on the artifacting around the bird? I actually cropped the image and tried to create something decent but I gotta say that you did a great job in Pane 1 with what you had.


I would prefer not to disclose the location since at least here in Sweden there have been problems with the theft of eggs and young from nests and this summer the poisoning of a peregrine family by covering a tame pigeon with poison.

Sweden is all that I was looking for so thanks.

[Michael Gehrisch]

Thanks Art,
If it's any consolation I have followed your advice regarding the exclusive use of center point focusing for the last 10 years. I can count on one hand the number of times I have used the 45 point AF, but center point + expansion wasn't working for me that day due to the distance and speed (or my slow reflexes). So it was just a shot in the dark...

Regarding the artifacting around the bird, it is probably a combination of isolating the birds from the sky before doing some shadow-highlight adjustments and then expanding the selection slightly, selecting inverse (the sky) and applying some lens blur to the sky. This eliminates all the noise in the sky and thereby reduces file size by about 50%

[Randy Stout]

Michael:

I can explain what happened in regards to not seeing some of the original comments initially. As a new poster, your 1st post has to be moderated before it can be seen by any non moderators. Your first three comments were all from moderators, and thus didn't show up because the post had not been approved yet! When I saw that, I approved the post, and that is why the followup comments started showing up in a timely fashion. Usually after you have approved a post, it will show up the previous posts at once, but some gremlin in the system acted up.

You shouldn't have any problems with that going forward.

Welcome to BPN!

Cheers

Randy

[Michael Gehrisch]

Thanks Randy, that clears up the mystery. :-)

[Michael Gehrisch]

Thanks for all the feedback and comments. Even though raw image was pretty poor, I had to give it one more shot. So a couple of hours of work with different conversions of the raw image with different adjustments to shadow recovery and sharpening, using layers and and then blending and then cropping the image so that resizing was in multiples of 2, I think the final result is a bit better than the original.