Red-shouldered Hawk: Dedicated to Jim Neiger

[Jay Gould]

The adventure began when I flew out of Australia; the schooling in how to hand hold my 300 and perhaps graduate to a 500 began yesterday morning when I met Jim Neiger. This is the last capture of today, my second day with Jim. A wonderful person; an incredible two days of learning and shooting.

Yes, beyond any doubt I am totally satisfy with Jim's approach to how to handhold my 300, and his approach to exposure. Those of you who want to learn how to HH; Jim is "The Man".

Let me quickly add that I am also looking forward to learning how to use my tripod and Sidekick from James Shadle so that I have alternative approaches to BIF photography. That education begins on Friday.

Knowing that I had surgery to both hands, Jim devised a special tool to assist in controlling the lens with my left hand so that I had something solid to grab onto with my entire hand/fist rather than merely holding onto either the tripod collar or having the lens rest in my open hand thereby forcing me to spread my fingers.

The image is presented as captured; no PP - simply conversion from CR2 to JPEG and from Adobe RGB to sRgb. On Thursday I am spending the day with Robert O'Toole doing "Photoshop" and this definitely will be one of the images we will address; I will post the image after PP the O'Toole method.

I was shooting the hawk sitting in the top of the bush and Jim said "ready" and made a noise to cause the hawk to fly. I hope you enjoy the results as much as I am.

:) No wonder I am in ETL, I am not sure how to state all of the stats when shooting in manual; for exp prog and meterng is it simply manual?

Camera: 50D
Capture date/time: 29 Sep 09; 7:00pm
Light condition: dusk
Lens: 300 f/2.8
Focal length: 780
Extender: 2x
Tube: none
Flash/Comp: no; none
ISO: Auto - 1000
Exp Prog: M
Speed: 1/500 sec
Aperture: f/5.6
Exp Comp:
Metering: M
WB: Auto
AF Drive: AI Servo
Tripod: no

All C&Cs gratefully appreciated!

[Gus Cobos]

Hi Jay,
welcome back...I wish you a speedy recovery from your surgery...:D I'm glad to hear that you are learning birds in flight from Jim and James...I like your capture, the subject is placed just right in frame, and I like the banking turn with the details in the under wing and the raised feather tips on the end, the hint of vegetation on the lower left side of the frame adds to the composition showing traces of the habitat...I like this. I would recommend on selective sharpening the eye a little bit because its soft. You did very well...looking forward to more...:cool:

[arash_hazeghi]

Hi Jay,
Congrats on first BIF, way to go! love the colors and eye contact. Hint of veggies is nice too. The only issue here is sharpness, 1/500sec is not enough to freeze these guys when they take off. Looking forward to the next one.

[Jay Gould]

As promised, here is a RP of my BIF with the expert guidance of Robert O'Toole!

PP included selective sharpening, curves, and color adjustment.

Thanks, Robert.

[Dan Brown]

Way to go Jay! The PP'ed version is a much improved image! I also participated in Jim's "flight school" and loved every minute of it! Great info from Jim! One question for you though, did Jim reccommend ISO AUTO? I would think that with your 50D, you would be better served by selecting the ISO manually in order to keep the SS very high for the conditions (dusk here). ISO AUTO selection would be effected by the ever changing BG's of BIF photography! The 50D should perform nicely at say, ISO 1600 or 3200 (some noise? but could be handled in PP). These ISO's would have allowed much higher SS's, hence a much sharper image, IMO:). Have fun with your newly learned skills!

[Jay Gould]

Hi Dan, no we did not use Auto - ISO. I need to fix my template!

Basically we set the ISO and the aperture that we wanted and shot a base neutral using SS to zero the meter as long as SS was "fast enough". Generally we were working around 640 - 800 ISO early and late and 400 during the day when the sun was up!