Northern Harrier on the hunt

[Simon d'Entremont]

Always good to get a nemesis bird. I had several females and juveniles, but couldn't get the male til this weekend. I converted in Lightroom, plus a few tweaks to levels and saturation, and denoised the background and sharpened the bird in Photoshop.

Canon 7D II
500mm f4 II @ f4
1/1600
ISO 500

Simon

[dankearl]

There are a lot of envious people here......

[John Hackney]

Lovely light and angle. Congrats it is most rewarding to capture one the these guys.

[Randy Stout]

Simon:

Nicely done. Well positioned in the frame, good angle/pose, soft background providing some sense of depth. Noise doesn't seem to be a problem at this point.

Cheers

Randy

[Mike Poole]

Very nice work Simon, I like the angle the bird is flying at and the colour palette is attractive.

I often see Arash recommending 1/3200th if possible for birds like these, but having owned a 7d2 I can appreciate your thinking about keeping the ISO down.

Hope you're happy with this one - I would be.

Mike

[arash_hazeghi]

You got the gorgeous grey ghost! love the pose, light and the BG. The fine details are a bit lacking though and there are some sharpening halos, was it a very big crop? the grey ghost is hard to get close to

TFS

[Simon d'Entremont]

You got the gorgeous grey ghost! love the pose, light and the BG. The fine details are a bit lacking though and there are some sharpening halos, was it a very big crop? the grey ghost is hard to get close to

TFS

Thanks Arash. Yes, they are tricky to get close to. This one was cropped to about half the original size, shot from the car onto a roadside marsh. The original photo is much sharper...I still haven't mastered how to resize to 1200 pixels on the long side without losing too much sharpness and detail.

[Marina Scarr]

First of all, I am green with envy that you were able to witness and capture a grey ghost. You had lovely light, killer BG and love seeing those talons trailing behind. Now sure whether the 7d2 can handle a 50% crop and still give you details. I have one but haven't cropped that much yet.

[Daniel Cadieux]

I agree the IQ is not the best it could, but I love the subject, the pose, light, and row of grasses along the bottom.