Cormorant Landing

[Ian Cassell]

Canon 7D
Canon EF 400mm f5.6L
1/1250sec f/7.1 ISO 400 - getting used to BIF on my tripod

At the time I wished I had a bit of a faster SS to avoid the wing-tip blur, but I'm OK with this now and, in fact, it may give more sense of motion.

Levels, Sharpening, Minimal Crop in CS5
NR on BG in Noiseware Pro

[John Chardine]

Hi Ian- Suberb flare here! Well done on the timing. These events are not easy to capture! I would suggest cropping a bit off the bottom and applying another round of sharpening. Here I applied Smart sharpen at 75%, 0.3.

[Ian Cassell]

Thanks, John. As usual, I was scared of over-sharpening. It seems as though I always under-do it. I agree with your crop suggestion.

I

[Kerry Perkins]

Ian, nice capture of the landing brakes action! Always fun to get one of these. Two things that strike my eye are the rock in the upper left and a slight bit of rotation needed. John corrected that in his re-post when he cropped it.

My suggestion for sharpening is to do it on a separate layer. Just make a copy of your image on a new layer, then apply sharpening and over-do it a little. Use the opacity slider for the layer to adjust the amount of your sharpening. Much easier and faster than doing several passes at different sharpening levels to see what works best!

[Martha Weaver]

Great timing to capture exactly the right moment!

For sharpening, I like Nik sharpener. You can paint it in as needed, and get really selective on how much and where you apply it.