Whistling Kites

[JD2439975]

Caught some shots of the local Whistling Kites the other day.

I like the 1st one, "meal on the wing", but the rare bi-plane version of the beast in the 3rd image is the favourite.

Should add first three images are 1/2000 sec, f/7.1, ISO400 at 250mm zoom.
The last two images are 1/1600 sec, f/6.3, IS0 400 at 250mm.
Only image #4 is uncropped.

JD

[Dennis]

Hi Justin

Some lovely bird(s) in flight shots there – very nicely captured.

I think these might be a little under exposed as they appear almost like silhouettes on my LCD screen. Have you tried opening up between 1 and 2 stops to see what you might get? If these were captured as RAW files, there may be some latitude to bring out more detail in the shadows.

Impressive detail for a 250mm lens!

Cheers

Dennis

[JD2439975]

Hi Dennis, all shots where the 40D in sports burst mode so auto setting, unproccessed jpgs, resized in Irfanview are what you're seeing.

A bit of tweaking wouldn't go astray for sure.

The dog loves to hate these things so he gives me warning they're out there.

[dpastern]

Pity about these shots - the best birding shots are when the wind direction is heading towards the Sun - that way you have natural light hitting the face/body of the bird. As an example:

http://www.macro-images.com/images/Birds/slides/F79C9391.html

I don't usually shoot birds at all, and the seagull shots on my pages were the first attempts at BIF. Mind you, I was using a 1 series camera, where the AF is far superior to the xxD range of Canon cameras imho. It *does* help.

Have you considered trying to get a copy of Artie Morris' books on bird photography?

http://www.birdsasart.com/

if you're lucky, you'll be able to pick up the first edition on the 2nd hand market (not likely, people don't usually part with it). His 2nd edition was released only on a CD, but is very well priced and really worth buying. He's a brilliant bird photographer.

The lighting in these shots is simply from the wrong direction, and it makes it very difficult to show details in the bird(s). Yes, you could use highlights/shadows, but that can only do so much.

You did a pretty good job with the 40D and 250mm lens too, well done. f7.1 was never going to help your cause. Why not consider a 2nd hand 300mm f4 (non IS version, it's optically better than the IS version imho)?

I wish I could see birds like this!

Dave

[Dennis]

Hi Justin

Here is an example of what I have been able to achieve, (albeit a little “quick and dirty”) with a shot of a kite that was into the sun and thus had poor shadow detail under the wings. From memory, this fella was hovering some 40 degrees above the horizon so it wasn’t a "flying over my head" shot.

By shooting RAW and through using the Shadow/Highlight function in CS3, I was able to recover some of the detail in the darker areas under the wings.

Cheers

Dennis