Griffon Vulture in flight

[shane shacaluga]

Here is one shot out of a long series I took this afternoon. There are a few keepers but need to process them still

Here is one which is practically full frame. A bit cropped from the top.

Some selective sharpening on the head and played with the curve to try and bring a bit of detail into the darker underwing



D7000
300f4 plus 1,4x TC
SS 1/2500
f6.3
Iso 640
Metered from the sky and added a 2/3 of a stop (2 bars)

How would you frame it? As is or would you add some canvas somewhere?

[Doug West]

Shane...great flight shot you have here. I see you added 2/3 based on
metering off the sky. It's still a little underexposed. Probably going with
at least +1 would've helped out. I tried adding another 1/2 stop of
light in Photoshop, which looked better, but started to see a little noise
cause of the underexposure.

Do you remember where your focus point was? The head seems a little
soft.

As far as the crop, that looks fine to me.

Doug

[shane shacaluga]

Thanks

I wasnt pointing at the head but more like the chest. They were coming over a cliff quite fast and it was hard to keep them in the frame and not clip the wings. I have a few shots where the head is spot on but the wing is clipped :(

The sky was pretty bright too and with the D7000 i dont like going over this ISO as it causes noise and I am not too good with removing noise and keeping detail

Another issue with these bird is not blowing the white head to get the dark wings exposed correctly

I will post a few more of the shots over the next couple of days and see what you think


Thanks for the comments

[Sandy Witvoet]

Cool image! Wing spread is spectacular! Agree... it's pretty dif to get a HUGE darkish bird, flying FAST with a white-ish head "right on". Nice work! Would "mid level" adjustments help at all? I'm not familiar with this species.... looks like his head is pretty small compared to body? (vultures here seem to have bigger heads.) Good crop... have you tried to "loosen" it a bit to see the impact?

[WIlliam Maroldo]

The head is seriously OOF, insufficient DOF. If you familiarize your self with a depth of field chart, you'll find that f/6.3 only covers a small portion of what you need when the subject is close, and something like f/11 might be needed. I agree the head is where you should focus, and I do if I can, but sometimes is almost impossible (as I would imagine with a BIF with a small head) and I go for the center of mass as well, but making sure I have sufficient DOF. Remember that a cetain distance in front of and behind the focus aquisition point will be in sharp focus.
Manual exposure works best for BIF, the influence of the sky or background on metering (regardless of exposure compensaion you might try) is way too variable.
regards~Bill

[shane shacaluga]

Hi Sandy, thanks a lot for your comments. The image is practically full frame, i would have to artificially add canvas bottom and left to loosen it a bit. These vultures are massive but the head is real small and white which makes them hard to expose right.

Bill, thanks for your critique

So if I went up to f11 to get the full bird in flight, I would either have to drop the SS or up the ISO, both of which would have also had a negative effect on the image. Which one would you have selected?

Also an you explain what you mean by manual exposure? I usually take a reading off the sky and adjust the setting so the meter on bottom of viewfinder shows 2 or 3 bars to the positive side. I am not sure I understand you comment about the exposure compensation.

Basically my question is, in this instance there were 50 vultures or more on a cliff. They all took off at same time and flew over me. How do i make sure i set my camera correctly to nail the bird correctly from shot 1?

Thanks for your help

[Jeannean Ryman]

Shane, what focus mode are you using? I shoot with a D7000 as well, and tend to use one focus point aiming at the eye; adjusting for DOF depending on how close I am to the subject. At 640 ISO, I would have dropped the shutter speed. These birds aren't that fast compared to smaller birds, so dropping the shutter speed at this ISO should be fast enough.

[shane shacaluga]

Thanks,

I am using the centre one spot focus . Not easy to nail the head as its very small in proportion to their bodies but will keep trying.

So how low on SS do you think i could have gone without getting any motion blur in the face?

[Faraaz Abdool]

Shane - great composition here, although I have to agree with the others regarding the softness of the head. If you pan evenly and smoothly with the bird, you can get a sharp shot at 1/500 or even 1/400. You may not have to go ALL the way down to f/11, maybe f/9 or something.

The situation you've described is actually one of the more difficult situations regarding flight. If they were flying parallel to you to allow you to easily pan with them on eye level - that's the situation we all hope for! Unfortunately there is reality. Hoping to see more of your work! Hoping that you post a Lappet-faced vulture next :-)

[shane shacaluga]

Hi Faraaz, thanks a lot for your comments. I was worried i was going to get motion blur so kept the SS up. Did not even think about the lack of DOF for birds this big to be honest, but thats a lesson learnt ;)

Maybe wont be able to find Lappet-faced vulture but next weekend I am going to try and find some Egyptian Vultures to photograph

Will post some more of the Griffon vulture pics in the next couple of days!