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Thread: Panama to JFK #5/Neat Trick...

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    Publisher Arthur Morris's Avatar
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    Default Panama to JFK #5/Neat Trick...

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    This Bat Falcon was photographed near Canopy Tower with the Canon 800mm f/5.6L IS lens, the 2X II TC, and the EOS-1D MIII in white sky conditions. ISO 500. Evaluative metering +3 stops off the sky: 1/200 sec. at f/11 set manually. Fill flash via manual mode at 1:1 with the Better Beamer.

    I never get AF with this combination and I have not had much success focusing manually with the 800 and the 2X. Folks have suggested using Live View to attain more accurate focus but I am not familar with activating it so I was stuck with the viewfinder even though I tried....

    IAC, I did get one sharp image as seen here.

    When the sun came out, the bird flew off and returned to its perch with a freshly caught bat! But with a gentle wind from the west, it sat eating the bird while facing away from us and from the light.... You gotta love it.
    BIRDS AS ART Blog: great info and lessons, lots of images with our legendary BAA educational Captions; we will not sell you junk. 30+ years of long lens experience/e-mail with gear questions.

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  2. #2
    Axel Hildebrandt
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    Cool-looking bird and the sharpness looks good, too. Too bad about the light and steep angle. Maybe a tad more contrast?

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    Guruji
    lovely pose , sharpness looks ok to me ,
    TFS

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    Super Moderator arash_hazeghi's Avatar
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    Lovely shot, given the condition and such a long focal length and MF @ 1600mm :eek: . detail is good so are colors. This is a very handsome bird and at such distance and condition this is the BEST you can do. BTW, for LV you just need to enable it in the settings and then just press the center bottun of the rear wheel and bingo! press the bottun again and you go back to finder.

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    What a beautiful looking falcon, sure this forum has given my a opportunity to see so many beautiful raptors from across the globe. Loved the focus and exposure Guru.

    I took the liberty to push the level up a Bit, tone down the front feet and perch and push the sharpness by 10 in PS.

    I dont know if it looks better or over done, just a personal choice.

    Hope you dont mind a beginner playing with your image guru.

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    Hi Artie!
    Geat looking bird - agree on a tad more contrast. Kiran's repost looks good to me.
    Best,
    Ncki

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    I agree about more contrast and I am sure that you didn´t like the shooting angle but it is obvious that there was no possibility of getting a different shooting angle. Of course, I would be very happy having an image of bat falcon with this quality one on my files.

    I almost can feel your frustration when the falcon perched with the bat facing away from you :-)

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    Hi Artie,
    A very cool bird, nice eye contact and good detail in the bird. I like the perch as well. I am not fond of white skies, and if this were mine I would probably try to darken the sky with selective colour a bit by increasing the black percentage in the white channel......I really like the repost with some extra contrast and think in combination with selective colour you could increase it even more selectively on the bird. Could there be a bluish cast on the bird?? It must have been too cool to observe the bird with a freshly caught bat, I can only dream.....!!!!

  9. #9
    Tell Dickinson
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    Very nice shot Artie especially with a shutter speed of 1/200 and effective 2080mm focal length (if my maths is correct). I am glad others mentioned the contrast because I have just 'redone' my colour management and was initially wondering if it was just me or not :)

    Tell

  10. #10
    Erich Stevens
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    Hi Artie,

    I am glad you shared this one with us, in spite of the lighting conditions and distance to subject. It's a beautiful raptor.

  11. #11
    Publisher Arthur Morris's Avatar
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    Kiran-bhai,

    Nice job with the repost. This one was really flat out of the box and I did not want to overdo it....

    All, The reason that I went with the 2C and the 800 (even though I had to focus manually) was to reduce the angle of inclination.... He was pretty high up.

    I should have mentioned that I used a flopped and warped QM of the bird's right eye to replace the left eye which was less than ideal. Me bad.
    BIRDS AS ART Blog: great info and lessons, lots of images with our legendary BAA educational Captions; we will not sell you junk. 30+ years of long lens experience/e-mail with gear questions.

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  12. #12
    Forum Participant christopher galeski's Avatar
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    Niceone Arthur,I think Kiran post is better,thanks for both.

  13. #13
    Gal Shon
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    I am glad you shared this one with us, in spite of the lighting conditions and distance to subject. It's a beautiful raptor.
    The repost pops the colors nicely.

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    Hi Artie,

    If this were mine I would go for something like this.

    I took out a very small blue cast with average blur,

    slided back the highlight slider and selectively brushed onto the BG,

    added some more midtone contrast with curves, added just a tiny bit of saturation,

    and with selective colour I increased the black in the whites to get a more greyish BG.

    I think I read somewhere that you really like white skies and this probably doesn't really show the scene as it was at the moment of shooting so you probably won't like this. Anyway, I was just trying something, hope you don't mind and like it anyway.

    All the best,

    Krijn
    Last edited by Krijn Trimbos; 08-28-2009 at 07:11 AM.

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    Publisher Arthur Morris's Avatar
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    Thanks Krijn, I like everything about your repost except that it looks a bit too contrasty for me. That said, I do not have 100% confidence in this my back-up laptop even though it was recently calibrated. And there was a bit of color in the sky that morning at times.
    BIRDS AS ART Blog: great info and lessons, lots of images with our legendary BAA educational Captions; we will not sell you junk. 30+ years of long lens experience/e-mail with gear questions.

    BIRDS AS ART Online Store: we will not sell you junk. 35 years of long lens experience. Please e-mail with gear questions.

    Check out the new SONY e-Guide and videos that I did with Patrick Sparkman here. Ten percent discount for BPN members,

    E-mail me at samandmayasgrandpa@att.net.










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