American Kestrel

You did well isolating this landing- I like the wing position, the outstretched talons, and the perch. The overall scene is still a tad dark IMO, and a slight bit soft. Perhaps less EV and a smaller crop would increase detail and lighten up the image. Just a thought-fine capture none the less Harry.

Great moment, Harry. I really like the perch and the pose of the Kestrel. The exposure still looks like it could be boosted a touch, and the bird seems a bit soft. The bg noise seems high for that ISO and shutter speed-I'm not sure what's going on with that. It could be because you had to boost the exposure in post processing-that tends to accentuate noise. If you haven't already, you might want to look at some of the after market noise reduction software. A lot of people like Noise Ninja, and I use Neat Image. You can find lots of comments on the general discussion forum about this subject.

As you noted and others have already commented, -5/3 is way too much exposure compensation and it has rendered the image underexposed a lot. Adding exposure in raw conversion increases the noise in any image where it becomes especially noticeable in the dark parts of the image. Then going for a major crop like this the noise becomes even more noticeable. That doesn't give any help in improving this image, but should be factors to address at the time of exposure.

I like the composition here. The active position of the kestrel is very nice. The old snag adds a lot of interesting texture and a good graphic element. I agree with the previous comments about the missed focus on the head of the kestrel.

Between the large crop and the exposure adjustments a lot of noise has been introduced. Give us the full frame, run noise reduction on the BG and maybe selectively brighten the bird and not the BG (through exposure adjustments or maybe even a little shadow/highlight) and this image will shine like it's supposed to.

- Luke

I agree with the other comments here, Harry. Great pose and action.

Harry,
I agree with others too. Very nice dynamic action and pose.

You have an excellent initial image with that great wingspread and landing. I use PSE8 (and love it) and I think that all the suggestions made by others can be carried out with that software in RAW processing. I too would back off on the crop. Most of use can't even get near this bird, let alone have a full frame image of him. Also, what are you doing to get your image ready to post? May be able to get a lot of that softness out.

Harry,

I'm late in commenting on your image. I agree that the negative compensatio you used did not help the quality of this image. I've found that I quite often have to use +0.3 to +0.7 when photographing kestrels against a blue sky, I use EV compensation gingerly though so as not to blow the whites but try get them close to the right side of the histogram. I love the pose and the eye contact, I might ohave loosened up the crop some to give the kestrel a touch more room and to reduce the effects of the larger crop on loss of detail.

In this image there is an excellent dynamism , given by the three obliques lines , formed by wings , body and perch . Nits mentioned above . Great image in the end.
Giorgio

Wow what a nice action shot. I think the American Kestrel is such an amazing bird. I noticed in your metadata that you said that your 7D and the 300 mm lens was 420 mm. The 7D has a crop factor of 1.6 so you should multiply the 300 x 1.6 x 1.4 = 672 mm. So you have more reach that you realized. I also have the 7D, and I had quite a bit of trouble in the beginning with noise until I learned how to deal with it. Make sure the histogram is skewed to the right without blowing out the hi-lights. It will look a little overexposed, but that's alright because you can bring it back in some PP software. I also learned the hard way that skewing the histogram to the right captures more data for you to work with. I use Nik's software Define 2 to remove noise. It's so easy and I apply it to 100% of my images. I bought the entire Nik package from B&H for a good price. I use it as a plugin to Photoshop CS4. PS: Learn to use the custom functions. I have one set up for birds, one for landscape, and one for HDR. I can have my bird custom function ready in seconds.