Red Tailed Hawk in Flight

[Jay Bernstein]

Canon 7D
Canon 100-400mm 4.5-5.6L IS
f5.6
1/1000
ISO-100

Had trouble trying to balance shadow under wing with rest of body. Is that an exposure setting? I tried to balance in PS.

Jay Bernstein

[Kevin Giannini]

Hello Jay,

Very nice capture of the hawk in flight. I like the lighting on the head. I'm assuming this is a crop - if so, I would have left more space in front of the bird. Also, it doesn't look as sharp as it could be - I see you were shooting at ISO 100 - I would have upped this and got a faster shutter speed to perhaps improve the overall sharpness. I'm not sure how dark the shadow was under the wing originally, but now it looks a bit flat and not dark enough. Neat bird!

Kevin

[Jeff Cashdollar]

Jay,

Boy ,..Kevin provided some great feedback and I agree on the ISO comments. I never use 100 it is too restrictive on shutter speed and aperture. Regarding the body shadows, they can be difficult to smooth try leveraging the Shadows and Highlights controls. That usually provides nice results.

Was the image underexposed, check the histogram is there data in the first two stops on the right. When shooting against bright light sources (sky) the meter can move the picture towards mid-tone gray. You can add 1 to 1.5 stops of light to compensate and lighten the picture if needed- just something to consider when shooting towards bright light source.

I am seeing some noise in the image, did you run any NR. Jay you are improving with every picture keep em coming. The only way to get better is to shoot and post - you are on the right track.

[Dan Brown]

Good advise given, Jay. For birds in flight, a higher SS works well. ISO 400 or even 800 would be better, giving a higher SS and a smaller aperture, for more depth of field. And for this backlit type situation, +a stop or 2 is going to solve a little of the dark underwing and lighten up the sky also. You would have a lot less to do in PP and that would eliminate the halo that you have here. Very hard to recover this stuff in PS.

BTW, this is a Red-shouldered Hawk

[Kerry Perkins]

Jay, it is not possible to balance full sun and full shade. If you have only full sun or full shade you can at least make one exposure that works for the whole image. With mixed light, you are forced to compromise between the two and it is usually the shadows that suffer because you have to protect the highlights. The bird is well past your best angle and is looking away from the camera to boot. You have the right idea with the capture, but you need to get the bird before it passes you and in better lighting conditions. There is noise in the blue sky that should be dealt with. The "reduce noise" filter in PS is not bad on a simple bg like this. Do you have Lightroom?

[Don Davis]

I love the shot Jay but there is some super advice posted here im very sure you can make very good use of this advice Jay keep on clicking your on the right track.