I created this image last week in the Kgalagadi Transfrontier National Park. It is officially my first raptor take-off shot so I am very happy with it.
This greater kestrel and his/her mate were sitting in a thorn tree beside the road. The mate was feeding on a mouse kill (have some nice pictures of that too), and this one decided to take off and fly to a nearby tree.
I am very happy to have gotten this shot since my 1000D has a meager continuous shooting rate of 1.5fps in RAW.
I did a quick workflow on an uncalibrated screen so I hope the colours and exposure look okay on other screens - will see what the feedback says ;). The light was still slightly harsh at 3pm but I quite like the way it came out.
Techs:
Canon 1000D with 100-400mm L IS USM @ 200mm
f8.0 @ 1/1600 SS @ ISO-400
Exp +0.3
Hi Morkel, I trust you had a good time?
A first is always a great feeling and you captured this well with the 1000D.
I think it can be improved with a bit more TLC.
I would suggest that you look at the following:
Increase contrast a tad.
Decrease exp of the sky. Use exp selectively and not H/S
Increase sats on bird.
Remove halo from sharpening.
Just my thoughts, The image is worth the extra trouble.
I'm sure it's tough to get good action images at 1.5 fps Morkel, but you did quite well here. Considering the time of day, you did quite well with your exposure. I like the habitat inclusion. Here's a repost in which I boosted the saturation of the bird, reduced BG brightness, and removed a slight color cast by pushing the magenta/ green slider 12 clicks to the right. What do you think?
Hey Mork, looks like you had a productive trip. Great first, and you have done exceptionally well. Im very short of raptors in my files, so I will take this any day. Great advice from both Dave and Doug, and Doug's repost looks good. Looking forward to many more from your trip.
This is officially a very nice image. Love the pose and the SH. The repost is also very good. As someone who almost always creates one or at most two frames at a time, I am not sure that a fast frame rate camera is instrumental in capturing good take-off images.
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thanks a lot for your feedback Artie, Stu, Doug & Dave
@ Dave - yes we had a lovely trip. I somehow expected more animals but there were enough to keep us clicking away most of the day. will attempt some more TLC - as I said I did this on a monitor which was not best suited to the task, looking at it now at home it looks a bit dull as posted originally.
@ Doug - thanks a lot for taking time to work on it. I like what you have done to make it pop and the colours more vibrant.
@ Artie - thanks for the compliment! I always tell people a slow frame rate will help me learn when to press the shutter instead of rely on my 'machine-gun shutter' :)
Congrats on your first bro! Nice too if you asked me. :) Doug's repost is a big improvement and I am sure you can pull the same level of detail out with the methods described. As Maestro said, the frame rate is not the be all end all.