predator and prey

My belated welcome to NPN, Dan. I look forward to your comments.

A very nice capture of an intense moment. Your shutter speed froze the moment well, but your high ISO or your exposure cost you some detail in the whites under the wing and down the thigh. I have a hard time anthropomorphizing a squawfish - excuse me, a pike minnow - but I understand the sentiment. One of my favorite authors touched on the issue.

That's a good sized fish he's pulling out Dan, nice action you captured well. You didn't need such a small aperture here - F16, I would have shot it about 1 stop down from wide open which would have left you about F9 and you could have knocked down your iso a bit. I'm not sure but some of the whites on the flank look like they might be blown out - if they are you could go back to the raw file and try to recover them by reducing the exposure or using recovery. All that said, it's still a sweet action shot!

Thanks so much for your nice advice !
...I should have noted that this situation came up so fast that I had to use my previous camera settings (f/stop in particular). If I could do it all over again, I probably would have preferred auto iso,manual exposure, f/8 and 1/2000 with a -1.0EV. Would have made about a 1 stop minus exposure ?

I agree that the flanks need toning down... they are certainly at the limit. I have not done a lot of PP on this, but I'll try toning down the flanks some.... unfortunately I'm not expecting too much improvement...the image is just overexposed .

It seems that there is a real tradeoff with high ISOs ? I'm definitely hearing this advice.... I;m going to start trying to reduce iso settings...however given the f/6.7 aperture limit of my system (TC..) I'm concerned about reducing shutter speed ? My shooting preference is action shots.

With that camera I wouldn't be concerned about using high isos if you need them to capture the action or shoot in low light, it's rated to have good iso performance up to 3200. However if you can decrease it some and still capture the action that's ideal as it will result in better image quality, especially if you have to do much cropping as you did here. I prefer not to use auto iso but to set it manually.

Nicely captured action shot, Dan; welcome to NPN. I agree with Nate regarding the auto ISO. I prefer to have full control over all aspects of the techs and I don't much care for being surprised by the feature (even thought you can set the max ISO). As far as the Av f/16 setting, well... I think we've all experienced the "oh darn" (or whatever) experience of having captured a spectacular moment with our previous camera settings; it happens. I hear you on the predator/prey relationship, but it certainly does emphasize that nature is certainly not kind and gentle. Hoping to see more.

Dan,

I like the great action, the fish in the talon adds interest and I especially enjoy seeing the water coming off of the tail.

As I mentioned in your previous post I prefer to turn off auto ISO and set that manually myself. With the light you appear to have had when the image was created I don't think ISO 3200 was needed and may have contributed to loss of some detail in the plumage. The whites on the flanks are a bit bright and show little detail, you may be able to rework this in ACR and pull out more detail. I would not have used f16 for this image, probably f8 which would have blurred the background more and given you a fast enough shutter speed at ISO 400.

Welcome aboard Dan. I just got back from a long vacation so this is the first post I've seen of yours and it's a really good one. I understand getting caught for a shot with previous settings that don't bring out the full potential of a situation but with that camera, ISO 3200 shouldn't have much of a negative affect. Nobody else has picked up on this so maybe it's just me but I think the picture could use some CW rotation as both the front waterline where the blue water meets the green water and near the back where the water meets the reeds they both seems to be a very small distraction for me. Obviously the shot is slightly over-exposed but it's not too bad for me. Looks like you might be able to do some recovery. I personally would prefer a more blurred out background to isolate the subject matter and that means opening up quite a bit more than your F/16 setting. Like you said, if you had time to set up for the shot you would have made some changes. All in all a very nice post with a few nits almost all due to previous settings. Looking forward to more Dan.

Nicely balanced composition Dan and super timing. (Gary ask's himself, why the ____ can't I find an Osprey do this?) I agree with all the comments in this interesting thread. I chuckled when I read your comment about the critique process, so true!

Thanks all.. great comments, suggestions and support . I agree with all. At some point I need to start offering some comments of my own to other's pics,
Thanks,
Dan

Great action, Dan. I'll leave it at that, since others have ably discussed the technical issues.