Black-headed Gull catching Cranefly

I went out tonight to try and improve on my swift and fly picture and came back with this. I was watching a small flock of Black-headed gulls flying eratically over a field and was wondering what they were up to. I took several flight shots and when I saw this pic I realised that they were catching flies, something I have never seen before!

Canon EOS 40D
Canon 100-400 f5.6 L IS lens hand held at 400mm
1/1600 sec
f 5.6
ISO 200
IS 2
50% crop

Andy you did well to capture this not to sharp but good action.
Keith.

a well timed shot Andy showing something we would probably never spot with the naked eye. I think a bit more sharpening would improve it further.

Matt

Thanks for both your comments. I can never manage to sharpen my images without artifacts or noise increasing. I usually do it on DPP. I have PS and Elements but don't have much better results with them! I also find that sharpness decreases when the RAW image is converted to jpeg.

Hahaha this made me laugh! Lovely image and a bit of curves and sharpening would put this over the top!

greetings,

Jeroen Stel

Hi Andy,

It sounds like you're not sharpening the resized image which would explain the softness. You should also selectively sharpen an image to prevent the background becoming noisy (though 'smart sharpen' in PS is fairly good in this regard). The following link may prove helpful;

http://www.juzaphoto.com/eng/articles/jpeg_save_for_web.htm

Matt

Thanks for your comments Jeroen and thanks for the link Matt, I have had a quick look and will spend some time next week trying things out. many thanks again.