Spent about an hour with 2 Ospreys building a nest at one of our City baseball fields. The building is taking place atop a light stanchion. I had to crop just a little off the bottom - a light fixture. This image is one of my favorites of the 5 keepers of 184 that I made. I'll be surprised if they end up making chicks at this location - they began night games there last night. This was one of my first attempts at capturing moving subjects. I'm using the A1-Servo mode on my Mk III,
EF500mm f/4 IS + 2X TC 1/600 @ f/8 EV+1 ISO 400. The EV of +1 that the camera gave me was beginning to blow out the light colors on the birds chest and wings. I reduced the exp to +.4, cropped out the light fixture, adj levels a bit and sharpened all in LR. Opened in PS to size.
The pose and nesting material make this a nice image. The bird looks a bit soft on my monitor and I would go for a vertical crop and avoid clipping the branch if possible.
Hi Bruce !!!! Nice going starting moving images with a 500 and 2X !!!
I like the clean bg and flight position Taking enough you can come up with more of an open wing position Agree with Axel its not critically sharp You did well backing down from the +1 With a bird landing as this one you are not shooting the shaded side as you would going overhead. Not as much plus needed !! Hope they stick around for you ... might like bb games !!!
Thanks All - I had a vertical to post but spouse and I liked the Horiz. I have more!! :)
This is the from the same session as one I posted yesterday. This was one of the sharpest - except for the sharpest image that I'll post tomorrow just for Alfred...No crop on this image. Camera gave me an EV of + 2.5, which again was starting to blow out the lighter parts. I adj exposure to + .5 in LR - also did some tone adj and sharpened.
MK III EF500mm f/4 IS + 2X TC 1/1000 @ f/8 A1Servo ISO 200
