I went to a wildlife refuge today and saw 6 Golden Eagles, they were trying to help one of them get something that was caught in their talon. They were so awesome to watch! A young Bald Eagle was watching too!
Is this a composite: No
Nikon D3400
ISO 200
300mm
f/6.3
1/1000
Hi, Vanessa. This is a very nice on-the-wing capture of this eagle. That must have been thrilling. Not surprisingly, the bird is a little soft when viewed enlarged, and just a tad dark, I thought. But, I downloaded it and lightened the shadows a bit to bring out some of his color, and sharpened it just a bit (just to see if I could). Even with my limited skills I was able to make some adjustments so, you certainly have a keeper, there! Nicely done.
A good look at the eagle Vanessa. Good suggestion by Terry and as he mentioned and worth a look. You might also have considered an ISO of 400 and doubling SS to 1/2000 to really freeze the action.
Wildlife refuges really serve a vital service for so many animals.
@terryb Thanks, Terry! If it’s not too much trouble could I see what you did? The underside of the bird is really shaded.
@David_Leroy Thank you, David! You’re totally right about my settings. I was photographing the Bald Eagle which was sitting in a tree and kept looking up, then everything happened so fast! I need to react faster, I was just watching them myself and not even photographing at first! 
@terryb Cool! Thanks! I’ll have to see if I can get the shadows out of bird as well. What you did does help to see the details of the wings more.
It’s doubtful to me you could have helped the shading of his underside much with a higher ISO. Someone with more experience than me might weigh in on that question. But, as David said, the higher ISO would have helped freeze him. Shooting up into that bright sky is tough; it’s probably going to leave areas underexposed. I’d be interested if anyone else has a different opinion.
The real issue isn’t a higher ISO or even a faster shutter speed. You are shooting a dark subject against a light background so you need to add positive exposure compensation. As David suggested, moving to ISO 400 and a SS of 1/2000 would only help with action stopping and on this image I don’t see any motion blur from movement anyway. You needed more light hitting the sensor so if you went to ISO 400 and used a shutter speed of 1/1000, as you did, the motion stopping would be the same, but the exposure would have been twice as bright. Maybe that would have been too much, but maybe 1/1250 at ISO 400. Any time you see dark subject / light background think positive exposure compensation.
Here’s a version of the image with the eagle and sky brightened that feels more natural to me.
Keith and David gave you some excellent advice on this. Yes, it’s true that it lower I so you get better image quality but this camera can probably easily shoot up to iso-1600 without any difficulty. You may need to use noise reduction software such as Topaz DeNoise which not only removes the noise but this a nice job of sharpening.
I would advise you to go out shooting and do so between iso-800 and iso-1600 and look at your results. Set your shutter speed to a 2000th. Try to get a good feel for what it’s like to shoot at higher iso-. That will make a big difference in your image quality and degree of sharpness.
I agree with Keith on his advice. We want proper exposure on the bird and although we may sometimes want to lighten up the shadow to see more detail, you still want the shadow to be there for a natural look.
@Keith_Bauer Thanks, Keith, yeah what you did brings out the details in the bird more but keeps more of the brown color that they are.
@David_Schoen HI David! I was able to practice a little bit of what said just this afternoon on a woodpecker I saw on my bike ride. I think it might have turned out pretty good, but I was also pretty close! I probably will post it and get your opinion. Thanks!
@Terri_Barnett yes, I definitely agree about a natural look, which is why I always appreciate advice on in camera settings more than how to fix things in post processing!
Definitely great to get the best image possible in the camera. That said, post processing is not an optional step in the process, it is a required step in the process. It isn’t like this is something new with digital cameras. Study the work of someone like Ansel Adams. Look at the images he produced that are famous like Moonrise over Hernandez (as one example) and look at the first versions of that print versus the ones that we see published today. Post processing was done differently in the darkroom than in front of a computer, but the reality is, post processing has ALWAYS been a vital part of photography. I spent years working in a studio doing black and white and color darkroom work. If we would have been satisfied with the early iterations of the prints we sold, rather than working and fine tuning them with darkroom techniques, we would have been out of business. We also would have been out of business if we didn’t know how to produce great negatives from the cameras in the first place. While the tools are different today, any notion that post processing is somehow not needed or is some optional step in the final creative process is simply misguided.
@Keith_Bauer Yeah, I just did a course on that! And enjoyed it very much. Ansel Adams has 3 versions of it because the negative for a photographer is really only the score and can be subject to different interpretations. I personally like his first original one best. And it probably was the closest to how it actually looked. I’m not contesting the need for processing, but from what I’ve learned in courses from Joel Sartore, Michael Melford, Tim Laman, Tony and Chelsea Northrup it is more important to get it right and as close as possible to the end result in the field because you can’t fix mistakes in pp. So that’s my main focus (pun intended! 
) at this point in my journey. I’ve only been doing this for 3 years and that’s with a 60 hr pr week job and half of that time being homeless. I was furloughed in April so I have just recently been able to have more time to work on these basic in camera skills that I can see the majority on this site have down and have been doing for many years, so forgive me if I seem to not be as interested in the processing part of things. I just want the photo that I’ve produced from my camera to start out as a winner and then minor tweaks in pp are all it needs. I hope that makes sense.
