Red-Tailed Hawk

Finally caught up with this red-tailed hawk who's been eluding me for weeks. Shot today with a 1D2N and rented EF 400mm f/5.6L. Adjusted for lighting in LR3 Beta but sharpening left at default. As always C&C is welcome and appreciated.

I just viewed your Mallard photos, I would say its time to go from renting to buying that lens. Superb!

Steve Robinson said:

Finally caught up with this red-tailed hawk who's been eluding me for weeks. Shot today with a 1D2N and rented EF 400mm f/5.6L. Adjusted for lighting in LR3 Beta but sharpening left at default. As always C&C is welcome and appreciated.

Click to expand...

Hi Steve,

Great catch! I'm always impressed by the talons of they birds of prey, but also by their beautiful colors.

The images do look a bit dull on my screen, the histogram doesn't show any highlight detail. Maybe you can pull in the whitepoint control untill clipping starts and then back up a notch. The resulting increase in contrast will also boost the beautiful colors and apparent sharpness.

Cheers,
Bart

Nice shots, Steve.

The first 2 are hampered by the absence of light on its head, as well as the artificial aspects of the scene, but the 3rd has real potential.

I agree with Bart that the tonality can be further adjusted to bring out the best of this photo. It seems a bit 'flat' from whatever adjustments were made in Lightroom, but I bet it has more in it than this version reveals.

Thanks for the comments guys. I'll go back and revisit these in CS4.