Female Snail Kite

[Sachin Saraf]

I recently visited Florida and was able to see and photograph most of the birds on wish list for the trip.

This one is taken at Lake Tohopekaliga from boat in morning.

Camera - 7D
Lens - Canon 500mm f/4L IS
Hand Held
Exposure Program Aperture-priority AE
Aperture f/7.1
Exposure 0.003 sec (1/400)
ISO Speed 200
Exposure Bias 0 EV
Metering Mode Center-weighted average

PP- Cropped, Lens Blur on BG and selective sharpening on bird.

[arash_hazeghi]

very nice pose and BG, SK looks quite soft however

[Sachin Saraf]

Agree with you Arash, but this was the first time I was shooting handheld with 500mm and so many shots looked good on camera display but on screen it looks soft.

[PRABIR BHATTACHARYYA]

Sachin, very good catch.
Agree on the softness though. May be the boat is also partly responsible.

[Dumay de Boulle]

Lovely colors in the BG and that hooked bill is great but I have to say the image does look pretty soft! Looks like you had good light you could have upped your ISO for SS for the hand holding maybe like 640, that would have given you probably about 1/1000 if not a touch more...TFS

[Sachin Saraf]

Dumay thanks for the comment... while putting the specs in this post I realized the fact about ISO and SS, what you just mentioned here...but while shooting I just could not see the softness on LCD screen.

[Jonathan Ashton]

Nice shot - I feel for you regarding sharpness, been there and got the T shirt. I think I have almost forgotten how to select ISO 200 any more!!

[Stu Bowie]

Sachin, Super pose and head turn, and against a striking BG. I would try a version by desaturating the greens and yellows a touch to see how it looks. I also feel you could try another round of sharpening to see if it will hold. Since you say you were on a boat, was your focus point on the bird, as the surrounding foliage looks fine. Just a thought.

[Sachin Saraf]

Thanks for the guidance Stuart..I will definitely revisit the image and apply suggested changes to see if there is any improvement.

[Dan Busby]

I think it's worth spending a bit more time on this one Sachin. Lovely overall setup with nice look back, composition, lighting, etc. Maybe you can squeeze a bit more definition out of the bird.

[Mike Tracy]

Nice turn back pose and I like the color changing of the foliage. Too bad you were not accompanied by a guide / photographer who would have assured that you had the proper settings for hand holding and shooting from a boat.

[Sachin Saraf]

For test I applied quick Sharpening (30%) , Radius 0.5 and Clarity 15% on the same JPEG in Flickr using Piknic.

If the results look acceptable I will re work with RAW file. Thanks for the inputs and comments...

[Stu Bowie]

Hi Sachin, I thought I would share what I had in mind. Presharpened in RAW. In CS5 I selected the BG and desaturated the yellows, smart sharpened the kite, reduced catchlight, and took away the sheen on the beak. Hope it helps.