Peregrine Falcon

[Richard Mc Donald]

Canon 1D MKIV 800mm 5.6 ISO 800 +2/3 with Partial Exposure Metering 50% crop.



Not sure if this works or not but please do feel free to critique as I have a real need to improve my editing skills on this particular falcon.

Over the 6 or so years I've been photographing her I've walked away with a handful of half decent shots out of the hundreds that have been taken.

On the day of the shot I used just about every setting on the MKIV I thought possible including mode 2 on the lens so, out of the 68 frames taken only 3 didn't end up on the scrap bin.

If any other member has the secret to Peregrines in flight I'd love to hear about your settings.

Thanks
Richard

[Jeff Cashdollar]

Nice capture, this can be a challenging crop, I think you have done it well. There might be other options too, see what others say. I am picking up some BR noise on my monitor as always, could be me. Was the image a tad underexposed. Great top side view and HA is spot on. Given these fly at about, a million miles and hour you did well. Large crop as you know, with BIF it can happen. Like to keep them 70% or better, easy to say. I like the position of the subject, looks like he is banking for action - thanks or sharing - well done.

[Doug Brown]

Nothing to be ashamed of here Richard. A nice topside bank pose in some good light. I think 1/6400 is overkill; you could have gone with a slightly lower ISO and a smaller aperture (ISO 400, f/7.1., 1/2000 or so) for better image quality. There's no secret to getting good frames of Peregrines; lots of practice/persistance and a little luck. Keep up the good work!

[Gordon McKechnie]

I love the pose & lighting looks great.
Great shot with perhaps just a few more subtle processing tweaks to help it: I'd prefer a little more space on top, so that the falcon is a bit more centred on the vertical. Some selective dodging on the head & neck may help as that feels a bit darker than the wings/tail. And I might be wrong but looks to me like there's a bit of a red colour cast on the image?
Overall definitely a picture to be proud of (and 3 out of 68 sounds familiar in terms of keepers of flight shots....)

[Thanaboon Jearkjirm]

You should be proud of this image, the bird look sharp with good flight pose and nice full wing span. I agree about more room at the top and maybe a bit off the left side to make more vertical (something like what Doug post). Great suggestion by Doug too. On my monitor I see halo around the bird, not sure if it just me or not.

[Richard Mc Donald]

Thanks for eveyones response and some good advice.

Jeff, yes the shot was underexposed mainly for my experimenting with exposure mode. In the original shot the Peregrine was way right of center because Partial Metering exposure is weighted at the center (13.5% of the viefinder area). The cliff I shoot from is East facing so nailing correct exposure is very tricky as I'm shooting into the rising sun or close enough to it. The noise I guess has come form a final touch of sharpening before reducing to size for the Web.

Great shot of your Peregrine Doug. I've never really given slowing the shutter speed down, smaller aperature for more detail much thought over the last six years with this Falcon, to me, bird fast - shutter speed fast but I'll give it a try this coming weekend.

Thanks Gordon. Unfortunatley I have a red/green colour defiency so can't see the red cast, maybe a should make up a macro to knock that colour down in all my shots. I did overllok the darker areas around the head and neck, thanks for pointing that out to me.

Cheers Thanaboon for yoru kind comments.

Richard

[Kerry Perkins]

Hi Richard, I would love to know more about this image. I don't see the shutter speed in your post but Doug says 1/6400? What exposure mode did you use? I'm assuming AV. The shutter speed is really not necessary (1/1600 qualifies as fast), and Doug mentions the good tradeoff between shutter speed and aperture for greater DOF.

Having said all that, this is a really nice capture and I would be happy to have it in my collection. Well done with the BIF technique, really a nice capture.

As for post processing, I took the liberty of running noise reduction on the background (Topaz DeNoise) and some detail enhancement on the bird (Topaz Detail). Also cropped a little from the left to put the tip of the bill on the left ROT line. Hope you like the results. There was a slight halo around the original image which I did not try to fix, looks a lot like shadows/highlights artifact. I would like to see more of your images.

[Richard Mc Donald]

Thanks Kerry.

Your rework is certainly an improvement, can you share your settings in both Topaz programs please?

Richard