I have been out watching the piping plovers at my local Mass Audubon sanctuary "Allens Pond" and have obtain many nice views of the plovers, but yesterday three of them were flying all over one area and I tried to get BIF of them, I did have the sun behind me. with a clear blue sky it was hard to do a prefocus but I tried. picture is cropped and PS adjusted. Nikon D300s Sigma 150-500
150-500mm @ 500mm
750mm (in 35mm film)
Subject dist: 21m
1/1250 sec, f/7.1
Mode: Manual
Metering: Multi-segment
Exp comp: +1/3
ISO: 400
Hi Myer, Good lighting on a very difficult subject to get in flight. Would have preferred the bird not flying away from the viewer. I realize you cropped the image but I feel it need s more cropping due to how small the bird is in the frame. By cropping more you could give up detail....
Dave
here is another image cropped tighter with the plover flying across from me. I like the first image sinc eI caught the plover with its mouth open. They would swerve away as they cam near us.
I get the feeling that is quite an extreme crop with that amount of noise on the bird. Really tough little birds like that to catch in flight, esp as you say pre-focussing is hard too without anything for a reference point.
Think i prefer the first one although i suspect that you might either have been a little too far away and had to crop quite hard on that one as well.
I would try some NR on the 2nd one although as Dave said you might find that you lose a chunk of detail on it
A nice bif image, tough to get with plovers. I like the first post with maybe a little of the bottom.
And as Dave mentioned would have prefered flight towards you, or at least the head turned towards you.
Peter
Hi Peter - dave pretty much nailed it for me. Point of focus looks like it was not on the head/eye area in either shot - head/eye appears a tad softer than the rest of the bird in both images.
As mentioned a tad too late in both - bird is flown past you and away from you.
Keep em coming :)
Piping Plovers
