Black Footed albatross- Midway Atoll

[Steve Bein]

One of the most difficult times I had was getting good feather detail on the blackfooted albatross. Unless the light was absolutely perfect, the sharp details would not be visible. Notice the soft blending of grays on teh chest and head. This is the best I did. I am delighted that after essentially hundreds of shots on flying blackfoots, this one came out. This is a crop.
7D
100-400 IS @330mm
1/200 sec, f/9
Mode: Av
Metering: Spot
Exp comp: +2/3
ISO: 200

[Jeff Cashdollar]

Steve, a bit tight in the frame IMO and I see some noise in the BG. Is the image underexposed and when you added light in post production digital noise was introduced. BIF you need shutter-speed, ISO 400 would have provided another stop of light to assist and a wider aperture together would put you in position to catch the fine detail with proper panning technique.

[Grace Scalzo]

What a fantastic image to have in your collection, Steve. The large crop seems to be robbing you of some details, so I'd loosen it up a little. I see a sharpening halo and some noise, easy fixes, and well worth the time.

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Good-looking specimen but at this low shutter speed it is very unlikely to get good details as there is some motion blur. I would have raised the ISO to 800 or so. Did you apply S/H? There is a halo around the bird. Using curves in your RAW converter usually prevents this.

[arash_hazeghi]

I like the wing position but IQ has suffered quite a bit due to blur and noise from sharpening too much, I agree with Axel that it is better to raise ISO and open the aperture in this case to get a sharp shot.

[Steve Bein]

I used iso 200, 400 and 800 on many shots. The print at full size will show well. As I said, they are **** on wheels to get sharp. there was no choice in changing ISO while shooting. I tried many combinations of high ISO, which seemed to have too much noise on the 7D and low ISO plus different. this is a crop and I just wanted the bird since ther was no other details and the size of the posts are small. what size monitor are you using. Perhaps I need to go larger than my 23" since others seem to see more than I do. Returning to Midway is not an option, so I have to live with what I have.