Susan Cifaldi
April 2025 - Hey, wait for me!
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About the Image(s)
GEAR AND SETTINGS: Nikon Z9, Nikkor PF 500mm with 1.4 extender, 1/1600 @f/16 (because I forgot to change it, so the ISO was 1000). It was on pattern metering but given nothing in the background, I could have used spot metering. Then I wouldn't have had to tweak the eagle's exposure).
NARRATIVE: I chose this title because just out of camera range was a second subadult who wanted nothing to do with "my" eagle. Mine tried to catch up but never did get close enough for me to capture them both.
Anyway, clearly I have to work on tracking BIF, but this was usable even though it's not centered. Cropped, lightened (maybe next time I'll shoot in Shutter [priority rather than Manual), and de-noised. And look what I did with the sky! Yay me!
Actually, I have a great set of photos of a leucistic red-tail hawk, but PS refuses to recognize the file. Dang! So we will have to comfort ourselves with a fairly decent eagle doing nothing in particular. :-) I should really stop picking on PS because it was nice enough to allow me to switch out the blah-blue sky for a more interesting one. :-) So, at least there's that.
6 comments posted
Yeah, the eagle is a bit soft, but the eye is pretty sharp, so I went with that. Plus it's fairly heavily cropped.
Learning, learning! Thanks for your help.
I recently watched a Steve Perry video where he showed how to make "emergency" BIF settings, store them in a memory bank, and assign the bank settings to a custom button. I did that, but I adopted his settings, which did not work out for me. Yours are better, but I think what I'll do next time is take a practice shot as soon as I get in the marshes and use the settings taken against the skyin that specific light. I know light will change as the day goes on, but the auto ISO should help with that. I hope! Posted: 04/14/2025 20:37:20
BTW, below is a MattK video on getting rid of halos. This is short and sweet and is tailor made for your eagle problem and cleaning out the sky from between feathers. Posted: 04/15/2025 19:54:08
About settings. Big birds do not flap wings as fast as little birds. That said I'll take the fastest shutter speed I can get but 1/2000 is enough for big guys like eagles. I'm a huge fan of a tripod or a monopod I leave the car with camera already attached to the support. If in a hurry a tripod can be a monopod, just don't open the legs. My best shots come when I'm not hand holding and panning is sooooo much easier. Unless I'm dealing with multiple birds in the frame aperture of f8 is usually enough. A lot of the time, if the lens is at infinity the fstop really doesn't matter. I have good results a f4. I spend most of my day using auto ISO and I get good shots at ISO 2500 (focus and shutter speed are more important). I was shooting flying duck (fast little buggers) and using my dynamic group 9 setting but I really try to keep my focal point on the birds head. Posted: 04/15/2025 19:35:38