David and Goliath

LOVE that shot Neal.
The Bateleur on its own would have been great but the addition of the LBR and the fantastic ccolour it brings to the picture take it up a couple of notches.
Your perspective is terrific too. were you on a kopjie or up a tree?

Hi Martin. No we were shooting off our photographic boat. Luckily the bird was quite low to the water.

I am very new to avian photography so I do not have the experience to comment on the technical side but I do know a spectacular image when I see one and this shot is special because of the moment in time that you captured, stunning!

Awesome capture. Was this with 500 + 1.7x, and if so what is your opinion of the 1.7x? I have much better luck with 500 + 1.4x and a bit more cropping, but maybe it's a technique thing. 1/6400 is fast - maybe I need to shorten my shutter speeds with the 1.7. On the exposure the notes say -1.3, but it seems like this would really turn the birds dark. Was it +1.3 by chance? Whatever, the final result kicks ass.

Thank you very much Joel. I appreciate your comments.

John. I used the 600mm plus 1.4 extender. I normally use the the 600mm and 1.7 extender with good results. As for the -1.3, I normally shoot at -1.0 to -1.3 in order to ensure I don't blow any whites and that also gives me extra stops in terms of shutter speed. I try to get to close to 1/8000 as possible for the action shots.

John. I am finding myself using the D800 more and more for bird photography. I use the Nikon 600mm plus 1.7 ext to get me to 1080mm focal length and then with the huge D800 file size, I can crop another 50% to get me to an effective 1500mm focal length and have a file of around14 million pix. Now that you can work with! .

Very impressive pose, sharpness and composition. TFS.

Amazing Neal - couldn't work out what the larger bird was until I read your blurb

What a unique shot! It's great as it is, but I can't help wondering why you didn't use a smaller aperture, which would also have got the roller nice and sharp, you've certainly got enough shutter speed - or was it a case of everything happening too sudden and too fast. Nevertheless, a shot you can be more than happy with. Well done.
Grt, Ingrid.

Great catch, wonderful colors, and the story....

Ingrid. As you said it was all happening quite fast and I had to roll the dial quite rapidly to increase or decrease the aperture. In some image the smaller bird was closer to the raptor and would move away in others.

Interesting story and documentation of interaction here. I noticed your "I shoot at -1.0 to avoid blowing the whites". I did too for a long time. But then I learned that the human eye sees the darker end of the spectrum better than the lighter end. So when you increase your exposure in post processing you are more likely to see noise in the darks/blacks than if the exposure was correct to begin with. Obviously blowing the whites isn't all that great either-but get as far to the right as you can without going over. Make sure you have easy access to the histogram as you shoot (putting it in the center button of the multi-selector wheel of a Nikon works well) and adjust for your conditions. You've got some great images.

Angela. I fully agireewith you. In an controlled environment that is the ideal. When you have fast action and a variety of species fill the frame without much time to change settings and get perfect histograms we have found that with the Nikon equipment you can comfartebly shoot at these exposure levels. The other reason we underexpose is to increase our shutter speeds. So the recipe works beatifully on the D4 and D800s.