White-tailed Kite food delivery

[Diane Miller]

They didn't complete the handoff here, though. She (I presume) came up from behind, squawked, started to reach for it and then bugged off. Was it not the species she had requested, or was she giving him permission to eat it?? About half an hour after sunrise, with some haze in the east. I did get a full handoff a couple of hours later, with undesirable light, of course.

About 30-40% of full frame. Canon 5D Mk III, 600mm f/4 II + 1.4x III. ISO 1600, f/11, 1/3200. Might have been able to get away with ISO 800. Didn't need f/11 at the distance they were.

[Troy Lim]

I like the moment captured here. Did you underexpose the image? I see a lot of noise on the birds.

[Karl Egressy]

Nice interaction captured, whatever the end result was, Diane.

[Diane Miller]

Thanks!

I had just pulled the lens out of the car and put it on the tripod when I saw these two. Had the exp comp at 0 when it should have been at +1. Didn't even realize it till it was too late. Took all my attention to just get them in the frame at 740mm.

So I did increase exposure a stop and bring up shadow detail even more. At 1600 on the 5D3 that brings up noise. I processed both with LR and DPP and surprisingly got very little difference. Did similar processing to both in PS -- Neat Image NR and Nik Detail Extractor. I could back off on the shadow detail -- wanted to bring out the expression on the face but I could get away with less than I used here.

[Daniel Cadieux]

That was some bad luck to get the shadow across the far bird like that. Still some very cool action, both poses look great and the dangling prey is a nice thing to have here. I understand it is a heavy crop but I feel some extra sharpeing would be good here.

[Diane Miller]

Thanks! Action here was fast. I think I was on high speed burst (6 fps?) and in the previous frame she's a little too far away to convey what's going to happen; in the next two her entire body is behind his wing, while she apparently thinks about reaching for the vole, then in the next she's bugging off. Face shows well in the first and last ones -- I'll keep trying.

[Marina Scarr]

Over the top action you captured on the fly here, Diane. The shadow doesn't really bother me b/c it's in the form of a wing which makes it interesting. I realize you're a PP pro, but I would try reprocessing with more NR & sharpening.

[Diane Miller]

No way a pro -- I just spend a lot of time learning and love doing it. I've had 50-50 results with NR and sharpening -- one always seems to counteract the other and leave me back where I started. But I'm always looking at the master .psd or RAW file treating the JPEGs as a by-product. Should maybe experiment with NR and sharpening them after they're created?

I'm off at 4:30 am to shoot more of these -- one of the babies flew today, which I missed by taking a day off for Father's Day.

I'll be posting more....

[Stu Bowie]

Hi Diane, great interaction captured, and great that both have full wingspreads at time of capture. I really like how the back kite seems focussed on the catch. Good light on the eye of the front kite.

[arash_hazeghi]

Hi Diane,

I like the image, very dramatic and shows this behavior well, both are in focus and prey is still in once piece. Love the call too, just wish the head of the hind bird was not in shadow.

As for image processing, something is totally off here.

For such a photo that wasn't taken in low light and has no deep shadows, plus birds are white, I don't expect this much noise with a 5D3 at ISO 6400 that you are getting at ISO 1600, it is noisy even on the whites. There should be no noise visible at such small posting size. I also note a strong color cast on the whites. The WTK whites are pure white that can look a tad warm in evening light but your whites look yellowish green on my screen.

Here is an example of what you should be getting if RAW is sharp and processing is done correctly. I would stay away from those extractor filters, they ruin the photo IMO




white-tailed kite ISO 1600, image taken in low light

[Satish Ranadive]

Beautiful action packed image. Rest is already mentioned above.

Regards,
Satish.

[vishaljadhav]

The action here makes the picture unique , lovely one

[Barry Ekstrand]

Just a comment on NR - I have found Neat Image to generally give me good results, but not always. When it does not I'm sure the fault is mine in not being able to optimize the settings for those cases. However, after struggling awhile with those cases I switched to a different NR program (Nik Dfine or Imagenomic Noiseware) and was able to tweak for better results. I am still working on strengthening my Neat Image skills, but find having multiple NR tools available to be a good thing for me.

Barry