"Tearing a Hole thru the Sky"

[David Salem]

Juvie Peregrine learning to stoop.

D5---600mm----f4.5---ss1/2500th---ISO2000----Hand held@8:45am---30% crop

Thanks as always for looking and for your input. I appreciate it.

David

[Tim Foltz]

Dave, great looking frame, nice and sharp and you did well with the overcast conditions. These guys are characters at this age I remember getting strafed last year by the juveniles they were having a ball.

-Tim

[David Salem]

Thanks Tim.

I had a juvie strafe me 4 times yesterday and she got literally within a few inches of my head each time. I had to duck. I think she liked my hat for some reason.

See ya soon

[Ian McLachlan]

I've been waiting for the young Peregrines with your new rig . How could we possibly be anything but overawed. Thought you preferred even f6.3 with adequate light and a slightly faster sh.speed. Were you battling for light a bit. Or are you getting a slightly different DOF with the Nikon. Whatever the answer its brilliant .

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi David, outstanding, love the high pitched angle off stoop and the blue backdrop creates a stunning canvas.

A question , did you lighten the plumage, it looks a bit noise in part, especially at ISO2000, just curious?

TFS
Steve

[David Salem]

I've been waiting for the young Peregrines with your new rig . How could we possibly be anything but overawed. Thought you preferred even f6.3 with adequate light and a slightly faster sh.speed. Were you battling for light a bit. Or are you getting a slightly different DOF with the Nikon. Whatever the answer its brilliant .

Thanks Ian. Yes the light is challenging during this time of the year, especially at the Peregrine spots. Usually overcast and little light. Shooting without the extender to get more light on the sensor and hoping the action isn't to far out. Thanks again

[David Salem]

Hi David, outstanding, love the high pitched angle off stoop and the blue backdrop creates a stunning canvas.

A question , did you lighten the plumage, it looks a bit noise in part, especially at ISO2000, just curious?

TFS
Steve

Thanks Steve. Yes I was a little underexposed on this one but I thought it looked pretty good, especially for ISO2000 with fast flight action. Yes there is a little noise in a few spots, only really evident when downsized and viewed in the larger posting size.
Realize that I am posting this large and its cropped tighter to show the nice feather details. Could have easily cropped wider and posted smaller.

Thanks again

[Steve Kaluski]

Thanks David, I'm still not sold on the D5's ISO compared to previous Nikon bodies and I might be wrong, but it appears Nikon have not included it in their current brochure, therefore perhaps a 5Ds will soon be launched????

Parking that aside I still feel it's an absolutely cracking image and I know there will be more to come and even better in the coming weeks & months, big congrats.

[gail bisson]

The field skills to get this speedster diving at this great speed is amazing!
I must admit that when I opened the thumbnail I was surprised to see this much noise in the wings.
The blue BG adds a lot of drama to the scene.
The comp is tricky with this image. I wonder what a bit more on the LHS and bottom would look like?
Gail

[David Salem]

Sorry I was processing so many images last night that I got confused on what I had done. This one was way underexposed, 1-1/3 under. I was set up for the sunnier part of the cliff and it turned into the shade. I liked the pose and details so much that I processed it the best I could without using much NR on the bird. Still think it looks pretty good.

Steve, I will say that I have no idea of the other Nikon bodies but the D5 has pretty good ISO performance. Much better than my 1DXs, especially the MkII. I like the 1DX better than the MkII. The grain is smaller than Canons and is much easier to work with. This weekend I was at ISO2000-4000 and most everything looks pretty good.
Especially For action, I like the Nikons ISO performance better.

[Alex Becker]

Love the pose and determined look of the falcon. The blue water looks nice too. I wonder if warming up the bird a little would help though. What do you use to process the Nikon files? TFS

[annmpacheco]

Speed, incredible capture... the noise on the bird distracts me, but what a frame!

[Steve Kaluski]

The grain is smaller than Canons and is much easier to work with.

David without a doubt, the uncompressed Raw is a nicer file to work with from Nikon and the files don't contain the 'sootiness' that Canon files have. Nikon's blacks are far better and don't carry as much noise either, can't comment on the D5, but D4s files are nice. Personally this is why I do what I do in my prep of Canon files, and also what LR runs in the background too that folk don't realise.

May be one day we can chew this over with a very large beer.

All the best.

[Bill Dix]

Pure speed meets pure skill. Fabulous capture despite the underexposure. Processing held up pretty well under the circumstances. Do you ever use AutoISO on the D5? I've only experimented a few times on my D500, with decidedly mixed results.

[William Dickson]

Looking real good David. Fabulous flight pose. If I came across a dark image like that, I would have to definitely process it, and you did, very nicely.

Will

[arash_hazeghi]

nice dive it is quite noisy though which is coming from RAW conversion not underexposure


send me the NEF file, I'll process it for you it should have 0 noise and much better quality than this

[David Salem]

The field skills to get this speedster diving at this great speed is amazing!
I must admit that when I opened the thumbnail I was surprised to see this much noise in the wings.
The blue BG adds a lot of drama to the scene.
The comp is tricky with this image. I wonder what a bit more on the LHS and bottom would look like?
Gail

Thanks Gail! I will try it and see what it looks like. I kept it pretty tight on the left to give it more to fly into on the right. Thanks again

[David Salem]

Love the pose and determined look of the falcon. The blue water looks nice too. I wonder if warming up the bird a little would help though. What do you use to process the Nikon files? TFS

Thanks Alex! Glad you like it. I used LR but I have recently downloaded Capture One which Arash swears is much better for Nikon files.
I will send him the NEF and see how much better it looks. Hopefully it dose.
Thanks again

[David Salem]

Pure speed meets pure skill. Fabulous capture despite the underexposure. Processing held up pretty well under the circumstances. Do you ever use AutoISO on the D5? I've only experimented a few times on my D500, with decidedly mixed results.

Thanks so much Bill!

Good question because this location is a perfect candidate for auto ISO. The falcons go from full Sun and then fly into the shade of the cliff side which is very difficult to anticipate and to adjust for.
I use my shutter wheel on my back thumb in try to anticipate rolling 4 or 5 clicks either way depending on what I'm shooting at. Normally set up for the sun and quickly adjust for the shade.
Auto ISO seems like a great choice for this situation but we have a friend that shoots there every day and the big problem is that there is lots of ocean white water which causes large white areas in the shade and messes with the auto ISO too much otherwise it would be perfect.
Thanks again

[David Salem]

nice dive it is quite noisy though which is coming from RAW conversion not underexposure


send me the NEF file, I'll process it for you it should have 0 noise and much better quality than this

Thanks Arash! I downloaded the trial for C1 But have been so busy that I haven't had a chance to even try to use it at all.
I will send you the NEF tonight and let's see how it looks. Thanks for your help.

[Alex Becker]

Thanks Alex! Glad you like it. I used LR but I have recently downloaded Capture One which Arash swears is much better for Nikon files.
I will send him the NEF and see how much better it looks. Hopefully it dose.
Thanks again

Hi David, don't want to derail the thread, but I've been using Nikon's Capture NXD for my D500 files for about 6 months now and find it handles noise and underexposure pretty well, so I bet it could do okay with the D5 files. Maybe worth a try. I've been meaning to try the free trial of Capture One but it's a bit daunting so it's on the todo list. Interested to see what Arash can do! Best,

[Glenn Pure]

This is a drop-dead amazing shot. Fantastic viewpoint and dorsal view and I simply adore the detail and light tips on those feathers. As for noise, I held off commenting initially because I thought it was there but wanted to see what others said. I'm sure Arash can fix this and look forward to seeing an amazing shot become even better. In the meantime, if you aren't already using it, you should get Neat Image, Topaz Denoise or similar as plugins for your software (free trials available). It will clean this up in an instant with imperceptible impact on detail.

[arash_hazeghi]

the RAW file had no noise visible as expected, it's Adobe software that was butchering it. If you use your Nikon with LR you are flushing your files down the drain IMO, Canon high ISO images looked like junk when converted with LR, but Nikon is even worse than that

i didn't touch the contrast, you can probably bump it up a few notches

the ISO for this image is a typo I think, it is ISO 1250 so pretty low ISO.... I find that the D5 images hardly need any NR even at ISO 8000 which is the highest i have used

[Isaac Grant]

This is just great Dave. That intense look, the wing and body position and even the color of the water are all top notch. One of the best if not the best Peregrine frame I have seen.

[annmpacheco]

Wonderful work boys, Arash for your fine processing w Nikon Capture One, and Dave for this smashing incredible image!

[arash_hazeghi]

Wonderful work boys, Arash for your fine processing w Nikon Capture One, and Dave for this smashing incredible image!

Thanks!

There is no such thing as Nikon Capture One. Capture One is a software made by Phase One (Danish Company)

Nikon Capture is the software provided by Nikon for their DSLR cameras

best

[annmpacheco]

Thanks!

There is no such thing as Nikon Capture One. Capture One is a software made by Phase One (Danish Company)

Nikon Capture is the software provided by Nikon for their DSLR cameras

best

Thank you for the clarification Arash, Im still a Canon shooter... What an amazing processing difference with your skills and software choice.

[Debapratim Saha]

Wonderful diving shot David!!