Red Deer Hind

This was taken this morning as the first rays of sun hit Richmond Park, London.

Nikon D300s
Sigma 50-500
Tripod and 393 Head
F8.0
1/160s
ISO 1250

Oscar

Beautiful shot that really conveys first light well.


Simon

Some nice early light captured here with the shaft catching the head and torso adding focus to the main area . A different format/crop would have added more with the techs.... a lower iso and lower aperture prefered . great effort .

Hi Mark,

unfortunately, the biggest aperture of my lens is f6.3 and it is a bit soft at this so I always stop down to f8. Do you think a landscape crop would have worked better? This is about 90% of full frame.

Oscar

I had a Bigma for a while Oscar and you're right, it could be soft at full stretch - unless the light was fantastic and you could stop down.

Try a cable release and mirror lock up on slowish subjects like this as the slightest movement on your set up will effect iq - I'm guessing you have no IS on your lens ?

I think landscape would have worked well, but that's just me - the final image image is yours and how you wanted it to be. One thing though - landscape would have allowed you to zoom out a bit and lower the aperture....

Looks like you're getting your practice in for the rut !

Cheers

I like this. The V format gives the impression of having just a narrow view of the animal - kind of voyeuristic - thats quite appealing. Personal taste - but I would darken exposure a bit to keep the highlights more in check and let the deer's head/neck be the linking piece between the darker foreground and background - the light glowing on its head against the darker surroundings would look good in my humble opinion. But thats a minor point, it s a nice image as is!

I like it too and agree with John's critique. I wonder if it needs a little rotation too?

really like the composition and lighting here, agree with John about darkening the image though

Nice shot with unusual lighting