Osprey in action

A contrasty subject (black and white plumage) in bright contrary light is always a challenge. Unfortunately your exposure has resulted in blocked highlights on both legs and other white areas. If you are still shooting in jpeg then that detail is lost forever and cannot be recovered.

There is also a general lack of detail in the feathers which is surprising for the low ISO value and how large the osprey is in the frame. I think your shutter speed was high enough for the focal length to cover motion blur so perhaps you didn't have a good lock on focus.

Something has also gone wrong in post processing (or an internal camera setting for saturation of contrast or vibrance is set too high) causing a noticeable halo around parts of the osprey - too dark around the head and shoulder and leading edge of the wing; too light in front of the dark parts of the wing. This sometimes happens when shadow or highlight recovery is applied to attempt to correct for improper exposure.

If you have cropped this to make the osprey bigger in there frame I'd back off a bit and give the bird a bit more room, and I'd rework this to avoid the halos.

Sandy nits covered well by Richard and it's a pity about the eye focus but it must be difficult with a grab shot like this,there are a lot of positive's with this shot that I would be very pleased with.

Keith.

Hi Sandy, pretty hard for me to critique the sharpness without the large version. That would help a bunch. I think Richard has given lots of good things to think about. I am not sure what AF options you have your camera set on, but for flight shots, I've always found it best to use single point so I can decide where top place the critical focus instead of leaving that up to the camera. That might help in the future if you aren't already doing so,

Nice wing position, Sandy, and a neat intense stare. You might want to do some selective sharpening around the eye. I don't know if you've started playing with adding canvas yet, but this would be an easy one to start on and you could loosen up the composition a bit. Last nit: the front of the legs looks blown out (overexposed). I don't know if you're shooting in RAW mode, but if you're not, you should think about starting. It gives you all the original sensor information to work with and you can often recover mildly overexposed areas and bring the detail back in processing.

I forgot to check the notify button so I am a bit behind here.

Richard - this happened rather fast and it was one of those fire fast and hope shots. It was framed exactly like it came out - there was no cropping. I do have a version without the halo effect, I think I got a bit carried away with the slider in PP. It was one of these situations where you are doing some still shots and all of a sudden there is a fleeting shot suddenly available and it was one of those shoot and then look at what you hoped you got. It was a unique perspective, and it's too bad it could not have been captured with a bit more expertise. I'm still working on those BIF shots. I wasn't flustered in the least the 657 times I have jumped out of an airplane, but give me a BIF and I fall apart!

Thanks Keith, I am a nut about tack sharp eye focus, but alas, I felt lucky to get what I got!

Thanks Kurt, I am using that, but alas, this newbie is still challenged - I will get there!!

Thanks Dennis, I was looking into shooting in RAW a couple of days ago, but as I recall, I discovered that my software did not cover my camera. Just started using Perfect Photo Suite 8 this very evening, so I will look into it again - I believe I will be supported with that software.