Northern Harrier

Nice clear image of this harrier, Ron. Actually, I think that's my concern with this image: not enough noise! I guess I've become too accustomed to the texture associated with noise......
Anyway, this is certainly a fine capture and probably fits with everyone's tastes except those of us becoming addicted to high iso images.

Ron, nice light and a great look at this bird. This sure is a clean image. I know you don't use NR, so I am very impressed with the lack of noise at ISO 500.

Excelent shot Ron.....I agree about how hard it is to get a harrier shot, since I still don;t have one. How long have you had your 7D? Are you enjoying it as much as I am enjoying mine?

"How long have you had your 7D? Are you enjoying it as much as I am enjoying mine?"

Kurt, I've had it over a month now - I preordered. So far I absolutely love it - for a lot of reasons but one of them shows in this post - burst rate. Harriers in flight are tough to shoot for a lot of reasons regarding light, shadows, catchlights, bright rumps etc, so the 8/fps gives me lots more opportunity to get the pose and light right. Looking at my other frames in this burst I'm pretty sure I'd have missed this with my 40D. I've had to become a lot more selective in my image culling though, because the file sizes are so big.

You're still managing to get flight shots of this species Ron, and that's always a good thing. Most of our Harriers have left us now.
Great eye contact and nice light on the bird

wow, Ron--sharp and clear. really nice. good comp too. I'm confused by what is sticking out beyond the tail--doesn't look like a feather--I think I'd probably clone it out.

" I'm confused by what is sticking out beyond the tail--doesn't look like a feather--I think I'd probably clone it out."

It's the tip of the right wing Brian. Don't think I'll clone it out.

oh--I'm an idiot! (where's the icon for the embarrassed face??) sorry....

Oh great. Ron has a new camera. We are all doomed. Seriously though, I have the feeling that this is the beginning of another great round of Harrier photos. I may have to buy a new camera too and then drive up to Utah. I really like the clean detail that you got with this one Ron.

Amazingly clean. Really no NR? Great image and I also love the light

Great head turn and beautiful lighting here Ron

Your story makes me feel better Ron. Spent an evening last week out in a swamp trying to get Whiskered Terns in flight - NOT. Ended up taking a few harriers instead but they were embarrassingly bad. Not like this with lovely light and nice and sharp.

cheers
Rob

Well done with this image! Lovely light and great eye contact.

I agree with Rob D's experience. Our Aussie Swampies are some of the most timid raptors down under with an immense fear and avoidance of anything resembling a human.

Great shot, Ron. The eye contact and highlight, as well as overall pleasing light make this a winner.

"Really no NR?"

Cheryl, no, I have never used any NR. I don't even know how to use it. I'm not saying that I won't use it sometime in the future but if I do I will certainly include it in my techs.

Beautiful light, Ron and excellent detail. I think I'm seeing some kind of smudge at the junction of the top of the beak and the head but it might be part of the bird-just looks odd to my eye.

I like this and know how hard of a subject harriers can be. It takes patience as well as subjects to get something like this, and discipline to post only when the results meet your own high standards.

"I think I'm seeing some kind of smudge at the junction of the top of the beak and the head but it might be part of the bird-just looks odd to my eye"

Dennis - The "smudge" you're seeing is the rictal bristles, typical of this species.

Ron, can you tell us more about your workflow. Are you shooting raw file format or jpeg? Are you using any post processing? If you are shooting jpeg, are you using some in-camera settings that would affect noise? I think this type of info will help us all to figure out the best ways of using this camera. As you know, there are no shortage of options!

Steve, I shoot RAW exclusively. This image was processed in CS4 as per my typical work flow - very minor adjustments to contrast and saturation done selectively on the bird, I can't remember if I adjusted exposure in RAW or not but looking back at the original file I doubt it. Sharpening (USM) on the bird only. The background is untouched. The only thing atypical about my processing in this image was RAW conversion - had to use the Canon software for that because of no ACR support for the 7D yet. Wish they'd get on the stick.....

Thank you, Ron. Is your sharpening software Photoshop? Also, in using the Canon software I found I had to ensure that the image was not being noise reduced and sharpened by that software during conversion to the tiff. I detailed my struggle in the Discussion Forum earlier.
Here's the link to the forum topic:
http://www.naturephotographers.net/imagecritique/bbs.cgi?a=vm&mr=48325&CGISESSID=efc88a5455ac654548b70c12f0d7b05d&u=18139

Steve, I used USM for sharpening.

In DPP both my TIFF/jpeg luminance and chrominance noise reduction are set to 0 (I convert to jpeg). Default noise reduction setting is set to "apply camera settings". In camera, my "high ISO noise reduction" is set at "standard". So, assuming that Canon defines ISO 500 as "high ISO" then perhaps there has been some NR to this image through DPP.

Thank you again, Ron. Of course the main thing is that you are happy with the resulting image. Where all this comes in is in the future if you find yourself wanting less noise reduction. I found the menu that you are referring to in the Canon software. I had ticked the lower box indicating setting the defaults to zero. However, it's possible you overruled these defaults with your other settings! Nice and tricky isn't it! You might want to try playing with those settings to see if you can generate more noise. I'd like some company..... ....or maybe I'll join you and lower that iso!

The light and the face are amazing.