American Kestral

[Wheeler McDougal Jr.]

I have been trying to get a decent image of this bird. They love to move from post to post just as you are ready to click the shutter. I have had extremely poor luck with these birds and am wondering you all think of this image. I could have been closer and it could be a bit sharper, but I do like it. How do you all feel about it. Shooting data:
Nikon D300
2010:02:04 16:39:19
850mm
1275mm (in 35mm film)
Subject dist: 50m
1/250 sec, f/8
Mode: Av
Metering: Spot
Exp comp: +2/3
ISO: 400
White balance: Auto
Flash: Off
File size: 9,670KB
Image size: 1088 x 787
Color space: sRGB
Saturation: Normal
Sharpness: Normal
Contrast: Normal
Color profile: sRGB IEC61966-2.1

[Doug Brown]

I like the eye contact and the good look at the talons. The image has a significant amount of noise; looks like it was underexposed by a stop in camera and recovered in PP. I've had the same bad luck with Kestrels, but I had a cool encounter on New Year's Day; I'll be posting an image or two in the coming weeks. With persistence you'll get the image you want!

[Randy Stout]

Wheeler:

Great pose, feet show well, appropriate sized perch.

The IQ however is really suffering, from the crop and also noise ( although wouldn't expect this much from that ISO).

How big of crop?

I might also suggest, that with that long of a lens combo, 1/250th is pretty marginal for SS.

Randy

[Marina Scarr]

You have a lovely pose here with a nice head turn, good perch, nice view of the talons, nice clean BG. Unfortunately, it looks as though there is a pretty large crop. These little guys are extremely gun shy and not easy to photograph. If at first you don't succeed...

[Judy Lynn Malloch]

Lovely pose and head turn but agree that it appears to be a big crop due to the noise seen in this image. Many thanks for sharing Wheeler.