Heron

[tommayor]

Just another shot from yesterday...

a Heron in flight, in St.Albans.

taken with my new Canon 100-400 L IS Lens...

I was using the auto focus servo mode and had the lens image stabiliasation set to panning mode (mode 2)

think it was around ISO 600 and f6.4 to allow me to get a fairly fast shutter speed. It was quite a cloudy day at this point to had to bump the iso to 640.

Hope you like it. im amazed at the sharpness at 400mm! a great lens!

Tom

[coffee]

Just another shot from yesterday...

a Heron in flight, in St.Albans.

taken with my new Canon 100-400 L IS Lens...

I was using the auto focus servo mode and had the lens image stabiliasation set to panning mode (mode 2)

think it was around ISO 600 and f6.4 to allow me to get a fairly fast shutter speed. It was quite a cloudy day at this point to had to bump the iso to 640.

Hope you like it. im amazed at the sharpness at 400mm! a great lens!

Tom

ISO 400 at 5.6 would have given you the same shutter speed, which would have introduced less noise. I think it's a fine shot, composed well with very good sharpness. The bird however looks a little flat because it lacks some contrast and saturation. What camera are you using Tom? Have you worked on this image in post? I have this lens too and as long as you have plenty of available light, it's a great lens. Under heavy cloud cover and shooting nature, you might as well be in complete darkness. :) I'm sure you know what I mean.

[tommayor]

I went for one stop from wide open to bring slightly more depth of field. i wanted to make sure i had a tad more of the birds wings in flight. turns out herons are much bigger than i realised! hence the wing tips being out of focus.

In post production i lightened the shadows slightly... hence reducing some contrast... i agree with what you mean though now. at the time i thought differently and then didnt think something was quite right! so im glad you picked up on it.

Thanks!

[Kaye]

Hi Tom, I must agree with Joseph's comments, but great shot nevertheless.

[tommayor]

iv still got the original RAW file so will have another go at it! thanks for your comments !

[sandrac]

they are large birds and fun to shoot
can not wait to see more

[eyerkish]

Nice capture, Tom! The noise doesn't detract all that much from the shot, probably because the focus is so crisp and sharp.

[AndyP]

I too like it; perhaps you could do a selective denoise on the background (Topaz) is what I use; you can get a 30 day free trial from www.topazlabs.com.

Andy