Critique Style Requested: Standard
The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.
Description
This image was captured early one morning at the Parker River National Wildlife Refuge. These sibling peregrines are often found hunting and interacting near one of the main locations for small shore birds. In addition to hunting, they would often put on a display of airborne acrobatics which can be a blast to watch… let alone photograph.
Specific Feedback
The issue I am having at time is getting tack sharp focus on birds in flight, most notably early in the morning. I think what I have figured out is that when I photograph birds early in the morning with a bright sky, my canon r5 will struggle to get tack sharp focus, but when there is a background, especially a distant one, the contrasting background seems to help the camera get sharp focus. Any help/thoughts would be appreciated.
Technical Details
Shutter: 1/2500
F 7.1
600 mm
ISO 2500
This is cropped quite a bit.
Hi Tony, Love the interaction you have captured here. The autofocus issue you have explained is interesting. I have the opposite issue with my R7. Autofocus locks in pretty well against a plain sky but sometimes struggle with varied backgrounds. Given as you say this is a big crop, I’m wondering if the autofocus issues result with subjects that are very small in the frame. Do you have similar issues when the subject is larger in the frame?
What autofocus case are you shooting in and how do you have the sliders set? For my R7, I use autofocus case 1 and have both sliders set all the way to the left to minimize the autofocus from shifting around too much.
As far as the image posted, as I said the interaction is great and I love seeing the bird so well facing us and locked on to the other falcon. Are you using some form of noise reduction? I have good results with DXO Pure Raw 3 and my understanding is that denoise in Adobe Camera Raw works well also. May be worth a try. I mention that because I notice a fair amount of noise in the background. I can also see image quality is affected by the large crop in terms of sharpness on the birds. I’m sure it is tough to get close to these subjects.
Thanks Allen. I think the crop is a big issue here and I probably should have chosen another image. I’m going to find another representative image to share. I know I have eagle shots in flight with bright skies behind them. Interestingly, bright blue skies seem to provide enough contrast and I can get super sharp bird images.
I use Topaz denoise. I think what is seen as noise in the background
is simply due to the crop.
As far as the autofocus case - I don’t know if I can recall truthfully. Would that be available in the exif data?
Will post eagle image a bit later when I have time to find it.
Thanks again.
Tony,
I doubt the autofocus case would be in the exif. Look for those settings in an autofocus submenu. For the R7, it is submenu 2 but the R5 may be different.
I should also mention that I often have to bump focus multiple times especially when dealing with varied backgrounds.
1 Like
oh right… I’ll take a look… Thanks.
Good interaction shot and nice light on the birds. Whistling Wings Photography (You Tube channel) has some good information on birds in flight and setting up the R5. I found it helpful.
