(If backgrounds have been removed, etc. please be honest with your techniques to help others learn)
About a week ago I was sitting in the driveway hoping to find something to practice shooting BIF with the Canon R5 and 100-500, when a dark bird came over the distant trees. I assumed it was a Turkey Vulture and began firing away. Then suddenly, one frame before this (at 12 fps) something shot in from the LL heading for the bird. Then I realized it was probably the Red-tailed Hawk that lives around here. I have no idea why but this was the last frame I shot – maybe I lost focus. It wasn’t until I looked at the pictures on the computer that I realized it was a Kestrel. The IQ is not good as it was underexposed and this is cropped to 15% of the original frame, but I thought it was worth offering up.
700mm, 1/2000 at f/10, ISO 1250. HH.
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The IQ may not be perfect, but its pretty darn good. The colors and markings on the Kestrel show up nicely; perhaps more so on the hawk. Very neat action/interaction shot. Well captured. Now, if a Kestrel is willing to take on a huge hawk, why does it fly away from me when I’m a hundred feet away?
Got my posts mixed up on my phone. My apologies to you for my fox paw .
The image quality is not great, but it serves to document that a kestrel will get chippy with a larger raptor. The reason that the focus is not perfect is that the kestrel is above the RT hawk, but very close to ideal. An excellent behavior shot and size does not matter when defense of air space is necessary. Well done…Jim
You got a nice interaction shot of the two birds. Detail is pretty good on red tail considering the crop and small file we are looking at. Not a big deal and it might be my eyes but the sky close to the birds seems a tad darker in places. I noticed it between the long protruding wing feathers.
It is interesting how pesky these smaller birds can be around the larger ones.
Kestrels are feisty little birds. You have superb behavioral elements in this image. Yes the image quality is not optimum but I wouldn’t be complaining if I caught this. Having spent a fair amount of time where there is a possibility of kestrel and Hawk interaction, I have never seen anything like this.
Thanks guys! @David_Leroy, the darker halo comes from pulling the Highlights slider to the left. I wish there was a way to control the radius. On a better image with a sharp subject, I would select the sky and clone the halos out.
Very cool action, Diane. You did a very good job of recovering this if it started out as underexposed. The Red-tailed hawk looks quite good and the Kestrel isn’t bad at all.
Well, I’d have to say you did a great job in post-processing. You really brought out detail in the hawk’ s face and eye.
I haven’t yet made the jump to mirrorless and I’m intrigued by the ability to see and adjust the histogram in the viewfinder. Do you do this and how easy is it, particularly with fast moving subjects?
Thanks, @Allen_Brooks! I love having a live histogram in the VF. (Of course, it is still from an on-the-fly JPEG, just like the one on the back screen after a capture with a conventional SLR.) But with a fast-moving subject I hardly have time to look at it much less change it on the fly. Still working to change too many years of muscle memory. I find exposure for BIF against clear skies are pretty easy – I start with an overexposure of 1.5 stops against a middle-toned area, and it is usually good. I’ll check the histogram as I can after bursts and adjust if needed. If the birds are going to be against variable BGs, I’ll be in M exposure, otherwise Av is usually OK.
Nice to capture this behavior, Diane, even with the technical limitations.
I just shot my first BiF with the R5+100-500 combo this morning. Need to put in more work with closer subjects (today the Short-eared Owls were all staying farther away) to get a better sense of how sharp this lens can be.
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