This is a major crop, but hopefully the action justifies working on this image. Early morning at the cliff, I was shooting his portrait when he suddenly took off and chased this raven. The best camera you’ve got is the one you have with you. I only have the 300mm + 1.4x attached to the D500. Ideally, I would love to have more focal length. Also, I am not entirely happy with a plain sky and I wish this did not happen on an overcast day.
I think the image holds well with the crop, maybe not for big print. This is 7.5MP in size (30% of the original 20.4MP resolution). Just out of curiosity, I looked this up: Canon 1D Mark II (released in 2004) was 8MP. That’s quite a context.
(If backgrounds have been removed, etc. please be honest with your techniques to help others learn)
ISO 640, f/5.6, 1/2000. Pushed almost two stops in post. AI Clear and ACR NR combined with masking (AI Clear blurs the heck out of the raven). Added a gradient burn at the bottom.
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@adhikalie
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Wonderful action. It does look like the crop held up quite well. The sky does look a bit dreary. I wondered what would happen with just a bit more overall contrast, and then a slight bump in the blue sky. Played for a few minutes and this was the result. See what you think.
Wonderful Adhika! I’ll take the plain sky over complexity any day for a shot like this. The soft light does wonders for detail in your subjects, and much of that would have been lost with bright light.
More insights on your valid point about crops:
I bought a couple of 1D’s, four strobes and 5 lenses back in the day, my brief foray into Canon. That “measly” sensor sure paid a lot of bills before I let the camera go. My deflection back away from Canon had all to do with their poor strobes and nothing to do with the sensor or the lenses. I needed peak strobe performance for some of my work and Canon just couldn’t get through the gates of the ballpark, much less join the game. I was nonetheless impressed with everything else.
Wonderful action, Adhika, and the crop did hold up pretty well. Every time I crop heavily, I remember my first digital SLR at 6.3 MP. It still generated some pretty decent images. I do like Keith’s processing-it made the peregrine, in particular, pop quite a bit more and the sky definitely looks nicer.
Seeing this reminds me of the old British bird photographers in the early 20th century. One of the few birds of prey left in Britain in any numbers was the Peregrine. So they frequently tried to photograph them. The Peregrines and the Ravens shared preferred nesting territories and were always squabbling.
Adhika, this is a super action shot. I looked at this first thing this morning and glad I did not comment. My eyes were not up to speed yet. Now that I’ve seen Keith’s rendition it really has come to life. The blank sky was perfect it just needed a boost to bring things out better overall…Excellent photo…
As others have said, the crop holds up quite well. I think both versions are just fine but I do prefer the higher contrast. The higher contrast also improve some of the monotony of the sky. It looks like they are holding hands (claws). These kind of shots are really fun. I’m guessing this is a D 500 shot.
The ravens are indeed making nests in the same area as the peregrines and as a result altercations often ensue between the two. Okay, in my observation, it is the ravens that often start the harassing and eventually the peregrines just can’t take it anymore.
@Keith_Bauer, thanks for that tip to increase the contrast slightly especially with the soft light blend mode. I boosted the contrast slightly and I like the result to it.
