Sticking my toe in the water again with a large crop. This is 20% of the FF. No way to get closer, no time to switch to the 2X, and I felt the crop fit the subject enough to justify it. Cropping less would just add a lot of empty sky and show more of the other juvenile on the back side of the tree. Vegetarians can go over to OOTB or Landscape now. It managed to swallow the carcass whole, after having hors d'oeuvres from the insides. It spit out something with a look of gagging distaste -- the gall bladder?
Canon 5D Mk III, 600mm II + 1.4X III. Big Gitzo with Wimberley II. ISO 800, f/8, 1/2500, +2/3 EV. Center sensor on bird's head, Point Focus. Soft foggy light; would have liked lower ISO but felt I needed the SS as the bird was making some fairly quick movements and I'm still exploring how low I can go for consistent sharpness at 840mm. Even for a still subject I sometimes see slight streaking in a catchlight. Hard to know if it is an indication of vibration of the lens, or just subject movement. Doing everything I can to stabilize the rig, but for now would rather err on the side of more SS than I need. Basic tonal adjustments in LR (default sharpening only) then to PS CS 6 for a slight amount of Smart Sharpen and Viveza Structure. Neat Image and Nik Dfine both found no grain in the sky to remove in the PS file and made no difference I could see when run on the JPEG, but many of you seem able to see grain that I don't.
BTW, I'm almost certain I have found the secret to "improving my technique" with birds in flight with long lenses, in order to hold focus better. I cleaned the contacts. Hard to be certain from one day but I shot about 400 BIF (shot anything that moved) and got only minor "drifts" in focus, usually for one frame only. There were of course some frames of obvious operator error -- just didn't get the focus sensor on a fast-moving bird and the like. But that was maybe 5% of the 400. Nothing worth showing -- it was all experimenting -- but the results are now much more in line with my expectations from the lens and body, and from how I'm using the lens.
What a great opportunity. You must have been shaking while you were capturing this action/behavior, Diane. I like your crop and yes there is some degradation but this would have been a keeper all day long for me.
Glad to hear you're working out your BIF issues! :)
Actually I was thinking about throwing up. And I'm a carnivore. Who loves my steaks very rare. Just figured out the other day that I can post a series of images as replies without waiting the 24-hr period. I'll work up the 3-4 frames where he (she?) is reacting to some apparently obnoxious item extracted from the poor vole.
Its already being spit out in the first frame. (Not on burst mode. Was just trying to catch interesting action.) These are just out of LR -- no PS tweaks.
Diane...a former colleague of mine once told me that his favorite word when he was about 13 was "vomitocious". Sounds about right for this series of images! Nonetheless, they are great captures, and fascinating portraits of avian behavior. Definitely keepers. --Wendy
Yikes!!! Love the first image. The latter images are really a bit much for me to see first thing in the morning. These guys are tough to approach for sure. Have you tried a camo suit? I was wearing one 4 weeks ago and they let me come reasonably close. Unfortunately, there was so much haze in mid day sun, so the images I got that day was not worth posting. While I was busy trying to handholding a 500f4 II + 2X III because I left my tripod in the bush for ease of approach, the second kite flew in.