Great wing position and stare. I suspect the image is underexposed, and has been brought up/brightened quite a bit in levels, leaving the blacks looking a bit too light, with some loss of detail, and noise. Does the Sony A700 tolerate higher ISO's than 1000?
I agree with Jory, its a nice capture in terms of pose and position, but the image quality is poor in my opinion. There is a a lot of noise and the colours are washed out somewhat. I am not familar with your lens, but at F7 maybe you could you have opened it up to either lower your ISO and reduce the noise or maybe to lighten up the image captured in camera if it was under exposed (and lightened in processing...) as Jory suggests. (get Arts CD... expose to the right...)
regards
DON
Last edited by Don Railton; 04-28-2010 at 09:12 PM.
Reason: duplication of name..
Peter, awesome pose,head angle for me, however as mentioned, the colors are looking washed out from here. Check your histogram and perhaps post it, so we can further help you. With your great pose, and a little tweak with the exposures, i sure you'll be framing your future captures soon! Love Eagles!!!
Don
Jory, Don R and Don H,
Thank you for your critique. The Sony A700 handles higher ISO's than 1000. In previous critiques on (eager to learn) it has been reccomended that I keep ISO down as low as possible while still getting the necessary SS.
There were bright white clouds in a lot of the sky and I had set my camera to expose for them. In this image the Eagle was not in front of one of those clouds so I wish I had EV kicked up to 2.7 or even 3. Per Don H's request I have posted the Histogram from this image.
Also I posted another Eagle image in Eager to Learn this morning.
Thanks, Peter
On my camera I did some tests to determine the ISO that gave me noise levels I could live with. On my 10D thats 400 (its an oldish camera) and its now my default setting for most situations. Maybe you could make your own tests... Having to lighten an image will always make the nose seem worse, best to keep your histogram close to the right hand side and then correct levels in post processing. This will help minimise noise. Check out Arthur Morris CD for more details on this if you don't already have it..
I am very envious that you have the oppertunity to photograph such a beautiful bird...
I agree. I have found that I'm much better off contending with the noise at higher ISO, than with the effects of underexposure. Fortunately, my Nikon D700 handles high ISOs quite well.