Nankeen Kestrel

[hotspur (Chris)]

Was able to walk up close to this kestrel,unfortunately the sky and lighting conditions were not the best.But getting so close with a 400 mm lens does not happen too often,so got a few images of him,before leaving him in peace.

Hope these are of interest.

[astroron (Ron)]

Nice Chris
Cheers

[Miaplacidus (Brian)]

They're all great images, Chris. Have to love the sharpness of that lens.

[AstralTraveller (David)]

Very very nice.

Please don't take this the wrong way but has that been touched up or is it straight off the camera? I'm just trying to gauge what others can achieve compared to my shots. There is a vibrancy about these shots that I can't achieve. I assume this is with the 50D? Perhaps the 400D just doesn't cut it and I'll have to tell my wife I need a 70D.

[hotspur (Chris)]

Thanks Ron,Brian and David.

Yes David,the images have certainly been through CS5, and I certainly fiddled with it-with many tools-'blacks' and 'temperature'-I had to 'warm' it up a bit,and adjusted the vibrant adjuster,I then adjusted curves,I usually do another adjust in layers-but it was going to work in these images,because of blown light.after all that I went into filters and adjusteed sharpness (maybe too much).

The image look 'cold' without any thing done to it.The specs-ISO 320,speed 1/800 AV 7.1,(image 1226 -the first one-which is -I think the better one),I continually adjusted settings,as moving to target,and had time to review and think about adjustments-the sky/brightness kept changing.I'll try and post some images-straight out of camera.I think the chap in ute took some photos of me taking hawk photos (hope so-might be interesting to see how close I got),so will load up it they are on his card.

The 50D was used with Canon 400L,I find the 50D certainly helps after using a 450D-but I did find there was a learning curve-and so too there would be going from a 400D to 7D.If I can make the jump up to a 7D from a 50D should be less of a learning cure,but unsure if there would be much of an 'up' in these type of bird images.

hope this helps

[Derek Klepp]

Nice shot Chris. Ran into a bird shooter the other day using a 300mm f2.8 with a 2x extender and even he commented how many good shots he'd seen with the 400mm. And here's another.

[leon]

Wow Chris that is so crisp and clean, beautiful capture

Leon

[MortonH]

Awesome shots, Chris!

[ourkind (Carlos)]

Beautiful captures Chris nice work

[Paddy (Patrick)]

Nice shots, Chris and you've got great feather detail in spite of difficult lighting. Well done.