I might have missed this hawk dining on his catch had I not noticed tufts of something sailing on the wind. I couldn’t determine what it was until I followed the wind-blown debris back to it’s source and discovered it was this hawk, pulling the feathers off his prey.
UPDATE, February 8, 2021: Apparently, this is a male Cooper’s Hawk, so identified by the folks at ebird. This hawk is listed as “endangered” in this region of Oklahoma, so I’m really glad I was able to get a photo of him.
Specific Feedback Requested
Any. I know the photo is a bit busy, but that’s where he was.
Technical Details
Is this a composite: No
Canon 60D, Canon 70-300mm IS USM zoom @ 300mm, ISO 1000, f6.7, 1/4000 sec., Ev -0.5, Hand Held. Processed in Photoshop Elements Raw for exposure and PSE 2020 for sharpness and color correction. Light NR applied in AI De-noise.
Wow. This is quite a scene to come across. You’ve got a great look at the hawk holding the prey, but as you note, the scene is very busy. It was nice that you were able to catch the hawk in a small opening, but ideally, there wouldn’t be limbs crossing the bird. You’ll just have to train it better!
Otherwise, the IQ could be better. It appears that perhaps you cropped in a good bit and then ran some NR software? I don’t see noise, but I do see some smoothness on the bird.
Pretty cool scene. I don’t mind the setting as it is very natural and that’s just part of Avian photography sometimes.
Image quality looks like it suffered from the crop and noise reduction. Details in the plumage are not what they should be. Looking at your settings, while ISO 1000 is not that high, you didn’t need 1/4000 to stop this action. 1/1000 would have been more than fast enough which means your ISO could have been 250 and then noise is a non issue completely.
@Lyle_Gruby, @Keith_Bauer. Thanks, guys. Good advice. I didn’t need a large crop except to eliminate some of the branches surrounding the shot. I might try reprocessing it and see what I can get. There really wasn’t any discernable noise in the photo. Good note concerning the ISO, Keith.
What a good catch for both you and the hawk. Really nice that you were close with the 300mm. Looking at the eye I would say focus is very good which can be tough to achieve with all the branches surrounding the hawk. The feather detail should be there and worth having a look at the pp’n. Well done to notice the feathers in the wind.
Much improved, Terry. The fine detail is coming through nicely now. If you ever get the urge to practice cloning you could still try removing that one little out of focus twig that crosses dinner. It would be a bit tedious, but an excellent exercise.
Hi Terry. Detail is definitely better in the re-post, but I think you’re losing detail by not resizing. I resize my photos to about 1600 pixels on the long end. I don’t sharpen until after resizing. I bet trying that will improve IQ even more.
I think something is still off. Did you go to Image–>Image Size–>Width 1600 pixels? Another thing I noticed is that your resolution is only 72. I’d bump that to 300 and leave it there.
