Male Purple Martin

[Dan Brown]

This near full frame image was made at a local martin colony where the birds land on utility wires in the area of the nest cavities. He had just taken flight. Here on the west coast the martins do not nest in martin houses, they prefer drain holes in freeway overpasses? I felt very luck to have captured this shot FF and get fairly low noise from my D300 at 1600 ISO! I added some canvas in the left and on top, also attempted to remove two very OOF wires in the BG. PP'ed in CS3, ACR, NR and sharpening (a balancing act!) with Noiseware Pro.

BTW, I set my AF-C tracking sensitivity to fast for these guys, so as they flew in and out of the wires, I was quicker to recover focus. With my non IF lens this is working out well for me.

Sharpness seems to have dropped upon upload?


Camera Model: NIKON D300, handheld
Shutter speed: 1/1000 sec
Aperture: 8
Exposure mode: Manual
Flash: Optional,TTL, -1.5, better beamer
Metering mode: Multi-segment
ISO: 1600
Lens: VR 80-400mm f/4.5-5.6D
Focal length: 400mm
Focal length: 600mm (in 35mm film)
AF mode: AF-C
Image quality: RAW
White balance: AUTO
Active D-Lighting: Off

[Dave Blinder]

Dan - Love the wingspan and eye contact. Excellent flash work as well. Looks good for ISO 1600!

[Fabs Forns]

Not an easy image to get, great wing pose and sharpness. The mixed light is my only complain :)
Maybe some Shadow/Highlight would take care of that in PS.

[Lance Peters]

Hi Dan - tough guys to capture in flight - have done well.
Sharpness and pose looks really good.
Mixed light might be fixable.
Good one!!

[arash_hazeghi]

great job with a tough bird in flight, you did very well. When I had Nikon I would set the "lock-on delay" to off and it worked best with dynamic AF. TFS