In January 2019 I visited Bosque del Apache for the first time. It was very, very cold in the mornings! Just beautiful terrain and lighting, and the Sandhill Crane and Snow Geese liftoffs were spectacular.
This is one of my experiments with slow shutter speeds. The warm light at 6:30am was gorgeous.
So dang good Mark. Wow! Perfect background for this image and great downward wing stroke. I’m loving your slow shutter series for sure. Do you have any more room to work with. Might be just a tick tight. It’s amazing that 1/50 of a second is slow shutter speed but these long lenses that’s what you get. Very tough shot to capture. I’ve tried this and have never gotten a good image out of it. Well done Mark.
This is a nice frame showing motion with the Sandhill. I’ve shot thousands of these and the keeper rate is low to get a nice wing position, nice wing blur and a decently sharp eye. My biggest wish for this is much more room. To me it’s all about motion, but the bird is tight in the frame with no place to go. Curious about NR at ISO 100?
Excellent work, Mark. I always have trouble panning to get the eye sharp and you did a fine job. I agree that if you have it, more space would be very nice.
Thanks @Allen_Sparks, @Lyle_Gruby, @David_Haynes, @Keith_Bauer, @Dennis_Plank for your comments. I attached a larger crop as “REVISED” in the original post…now including some blurry water. I think I originally cropped in tighter to enjoy more details of the Crane.
Also I turned off the Noise Reduction…do you see any noise and is it bothersome?
@Lyle_Gruby, I hadn’t even noticed that the Crane was a little past me. Good eye!
@Keith_Bauer, yeah the keeper rate for these was very low. Although I love the D500, in lower light like early morning/late evening I still get some noise even at ISO 100. It just doesn’t seem to perform all that well. Maybe I’m too picky but I used NR because the Revised post shows some noise to me on my monitor at 200%
200%… That is twice the resolution of your monitor, for every pixel in the image it requires 2 pixels on the monitor, so I’m not surprised you’d see some artifacts, but it is probably from interpolation in PS, not real digital noise. I pulled the second version, looked at it at 100% and can’t see any noise. I don’t normally look at my images at 100% because that isn’t how they are viewed. I have my monitor set up so when I choose Print Size, it is REALLY print size. That is the size I use to evaluate sharpening and noise. For my monitor that is 219 pixels per inch (Photoshop Preferences / Units & Rulers / Screen Resolution)
This is giving me a lot of food for thought. I had learned on YouTube to view at 200% and adjust accordingly, but I see your point…I’m just creating pixels! Maybe my D500 performs just fine in low light after all! Thanks for explaining this.
Really nice image, I do love the way the blurred wings show movement, whereas the head and eye are sharp. Well done ! Wonderful colours in the image as well! Cheers, Hans
