Gone Fishing

A fine one, Dan. Good detail in soft light. Very nice for ISO 1600! What is a Bushhawk?

Dan: Great pose, Intense stare, background that is really nice. Your exposure looks very good. ISO 1600 looks very good here on the background. Did you do noise reduction on the image. There seems to be a lack of feather detail on the head and I'm wondering if it is due to NR. A small issue with a very powerful image.

Dan, I like the angle you caught this eagle in. Very dramatic. Good exposure and sharpness. I see little noise in the BG. Thanks for sharing.

Dan,
Great picture.

Phil,
A Bushawk is a mount for your camera similar to a gun stock and you hold it against your shoulder.

Thanks for the comments. Phil, the Bushhawk is a shoulder stock mount with a trigger shutter release.

Regarding the somewhat soft feathers on head, this was the first time I used the D7000 for BIF shooting. While the high ISO performance is great for a DX format, it appears that the AF tracking isn't up to snuff for fast moving targets. On this image if you note the wing closest to the camera is slightly on the leading edge of DOF while the offside wing is good and sharp. The AF couldn't quite keep up with the speed of the bird approaching the camera. While the lateral shots I took that day are sharp, nearly all of the shots of incoming targets were OOF. I had one sequence of a bird coming nearly straight at the camera and the whole set is OOF. Needless to say I was rather perturbed. I'm back to the D300 for birds.

Great shot. I really gives the feeling of power.

Really dynamic incoming pose, excellent! The background gives a good sense of place without competing with the subject. Focus does appear to be on the back wing, unfortunately.

Great angle on this Eagle, Dan. Tack sharp and excellent light.

I really like the incoming pose that you have captures here. Personally I just can't stop the action at 1/1000s. With ISO 1600 looks like the light wasn't helping at all. You might get more detail with another round of sharpening. Still a very nice image.

Wonderful flight pose and great angle, some detail issues have been mentioned by others but a fine image and nice job in getting this.

Thanks for all the comments. Recognizing there are some technical issues with the image, it's good to get the positive feedback on the bird position etc. I love these incoming shots but typically they are against bright sky BG or a split horizon at best. Getting a frame or two against a decent BG was nice.

I'll have to go back to the original RAW file and re-process this image to see if I can pull out some more detail. I'm no expert at PS but should still be able to do better than this version which was processed quickly on a laptop. If I get a chance to do so in the next couple of days I'll do a repost.

Thanks again.

This is a awesome flight pose Dan Worth a little bit more attaention as suggested.

Ken Archer

Did you hear that? It was my dropped jaw..........nothing else to say!!! Three thumbs up! congrats

Very powerful image of our nations bird! I love the pose, crop and feather detail!
Well done!!

Very nice Dan. Gives me something to aspire to.

May

Awesomeness! Inspiring photo Dan.