New Member first Post

[VinceRossi]

Seem to have lost my original Post. This was shot on a grey dark day with a bad back ground.

Aperature Priority
ISO 500
300mm
1/500
f9
No tripod---pan and shoot method.

[arash_hazeghi]

Warm welcome to BPN, this image is not very strong due to the following reason:
1) bird is flying away from the camera, wing position isn't great and the left wing is clipped
2) image is very soft and doesn't have any quality/detail.

In general 1/500sec is not fast enough for flight shots, open up the aperture or crank up the ISO for better results. Hope you can improve this work and looking forward to future posts.

[VinceRossi]

Thanks for the warm welcome and your honesty. As I am new to photography I thought this pic was pretty good. But you have pointed out a few things to look for. Thanks.

[Bill Dix]

Vince: Welcome to BPN from a fellow New Jerseyan. You've come to the right place. I can tell you that in the 7 months that I've been a member of BPN I have learned a phenomenal amount, improving my skills both at capturing the image in the camera and at post-processing. (And, of course, I've learned how very much more I still have to learn.) Stick with it, don't be afraid to post your images (either here in Avian or in the Eager to Learn forum) and don't hesitate to comment on others' work.

[Phil Ertel]

Hi Vince, Another welcome to BPN. I agree with the others that this is a great place to learn. Arash already pointed out the biggest issues with the image. What I have learned here is that with birds in flight the preferred wing position is either fully up or down. Ether position would have eliminated the dark shadow under the wings and shown us the details of the top or under side of the wings. Capturing the bird as it is flying toward you and before it is passes is also preferred. I hope you don't mind but I have attach my attempt at changing a few things on you image. I first added a multiply layer with a mask to selectively tone down the bright parts of the bird. I then ran Shadow and Highlights to try and get some details in the darker areas. I then sharpen the bird a little. This can't over come the bird angle away from us but shows that some additional processing can altered the presentation. It is your image so I will leave it up to you if you think this helps. Thanks for sharing.

[Aidan Briggs]

Welcome to BPN! Arash made some good points here. The lack of detail on the bird might be a result of noise reduction applied on the whole image. In the future, use noise reduction only on the background.

I would have to disagree about the SS for flight shots. 1/500 is fast enough if have good technique and are shooting slow moving birds like this heron.

[Harshad Barve]

Big welcome to BPN and nice advise above
TFS

[Daniel Cadieux]

Welcome to BPN Vince! Working up the courage to post your first image is a great step to take. You've come to the right place to learn. The major issues have been talked about already and good advice to go with it. I also agree 1/500s is normally enough, with good technique, to get big slow flyers. Nothing wrong in trying to get more SS though and another way to do it is to open up your aperture (smaller f/number).