Kestrel in Flight at First Light

[Loi Nguyen]

Took this image of a Kestrel at first light. The sun had just risen above the far hill when he made a launch from his favorite perch. I was lucky enough to get a shott in reasonably sharp focus. I followed Artie's instruction to convert the RAW image to TITF in DPP and saw that I once again blew the highlight on the bird neck (Red channel value at 255). Then I imported the image in LR4 to make final adjustment (no I don't have PS yet). Please comment whether you think I should have done something differently with the exposure.


1DX
500f5 II + 1.4X III
1/1600
f5.6
ISO-800
Manual exposure after some test shots to ensure I have data in the right hand box.
tripod

Cropped to 20% of W and 20% of Height. This bird is so fast that if I got closer, I'd have likely missed the shot altogether and would have to shoot at a steep angle. So, will have to wait for when he flys directly towards me for a better shot. I think it will be just a matter of time with more time with him.

Thank you

Loi

[Juan Carlos Vindas]

Nice kestrel, light and sky, the blurred wings give sense of motion which is fine with me. My only wish is that the face or eye was more in focus.

[Diane Miller]

Gorgeous! It looks just a little dark and contrasty on my monitor, especially for first light, but that adds to the drama.

There is something about bird's eyes in my shots that often don't seem sharp. There is obviously not a lot of DOF here, but the beak certainly looks sharp, and most of the body seems sharp.

Congratulations on a difficult capture.

[Loi Nguyen]

Nice kestrel, light and sky, the blurred wings give sense of motion which is fine with me. My only wish is that the face or eye was more in focus.

Hi Juan, you were absolutely right. My AF focus was off. He was just too fast! I got some other pics that were in better focus, but the wing and eye positions were off. Oh, we'll.

[Juan Carlos Vindas]

Hi Juan, you were absolutely right. My AF focus was off. He was just too fast! I got some other pics that were in better focus, but the wing and eye positions were off. Oh, we'll.

Hi Loi,
I know this guys are not easy task! I´ve tried with no good results! keep it up man!

[Marina Scarr]

The face and eye look fairly sharp to my eyes, and this is not an easy bird to photograph in flight. The "pancake" flight pose isn't the most appealing and b/c of the pose, I would crop a little more off of the top and right.

[Cheryl Arena Molennor]

Beautiful light great HA. Nice detail on the head as well