Barbara - here's a little known hack when buying Canon gear. If you contact Canon directly and ask to buy a "Refurbished" camera (maybe all equipment I'm not certain) but if you ask to buy refurbished you'll pay about 25-30% off retail for a brand new never used camera. E.G.,If Canon ships 20 Mark II' to B&H and B&H can't sell them all and B&H returns 10 of them to Canon, Canon puts those 10 camera's in a different box labelled "Refurbished" - but it's a brand new camera - I bought my old 1DX, a $6,995 price tag at the time, for $5,100 - now that's the way is was a few years ago, so I don't know if they're still doing that, but it's worth a try.

You image is a GREAT capture of a hawk in flight but you have a few technical and compositional issues - in my VF I removed much of the branches; I've never thought it wise to have lines in an image that lead the viewer out of the frame - it appears you were trying to frame the subject - great idea, but not with such obvious "leading lines". While a great capture, the image is soft - personally I never shoot birds in motion at less than 1/2500th Tv and usually 1/3000th. I also opened up the shadows in my VF - in winning bird images the eyes should be tack sharp, you want detail in both the light and dark feathers and the motion should be frozen - perhaps the wingtips might show SOME blur in SOME cases, depending on the composition, but in this image I feel 1/800th Tv was a stop and a half to two stop too slow. I also added a slight vignette on the subject's head to keep the viewer's eye from wandering   Posted: 12/13/2024 17:56:54

I like the capture of the hawk, with the wings being diagonal in the frame. The blur of the wingtips does not both me, as it shows motion, but a bit higher shutter speed would have helped. The clear blue shy is a very good background. The branch to the right is good, as it helps to balance the image. But to me the branch on the left keeps the hawk from having room to fly.   Posted: 12/15/2024 19:33:32

Removing the branch on the left improves the image, but the two branches could have created some sort of framing. There are some blur on the tips of the wings. The blue sky provides a nice background. Would a higher shutter speed improve the image?   Posted: 12/16/2024 15:37:09

Hi Barbara,

Excellent attempt. Birds in flight is one of the most difficult genres and you have done well. Whilst some softness is acceptable to showcase motion the softness in your image is a bit on the higher side. Also Topaz appears to have over-sharpened the image making it a bit blown out specially at the wing tips. You get the eyes sharp. The white portion on the head of the bird can also be burned a bit. Well done.   Posted: 12/20/2024 08:52:59