Golden Eagle, Adonis
Adonis puts on a wonderful display every day at Hellabrunn Zoo, Munich, Germany. Fast-flying and tricky to photograph and so great for practice!...
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Adonis puts on a wonderful display every day at Hellabrunn Zoo, Munich, Germany. Fast-flying and tricky to photograph and so great for practice!
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Jan, 2016Views
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PhilC
February 11, 2016
Many thanks! Really appreciate your comment. I am certainly very pleased with this one, and it encourages me to keep working hard at it!
Same photographer See allBehind The Lens
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Behind The Lens
Location
During the Birds of Prey show at Hellabrunn Zoo, Munich, Germany. They run the show every day except for the winter months.Time
Early afternoonLighting
Very bright conditions at probably the brightest time of day - as can be seen, no clouds in the sky. Of course, this makes it a bit tricky when taking near-vertical shots to get good light underneath the bird like this. In fact this was resolved in this image by virtue of the fact that the eagle is actually flying across the sun with its wings nearly vertical, thereby getting perfect light on its underside (it must have been deliberately posing for the camera!). The image has then been rotated 90 degrees. The shadow on the left side of the bird's body also shows that the sun is actually coming from the right of the image.Equipment
Canon EOS 70D with 75-300mm lens, hand-held. Using a tripod or monopod does not work for taking flying bird shots as most of the shots have to be taken vertically.Inspiration
Firstly, it is fascinating to watch these beautiful birds in one of these shows and then to try to get some good images as a record. Secondly, it is a tremendous way of developing your photo skills as getting very good images is extremely difficult because of the speed and manoeuvring of the birds, along with the difficulty of taking near-vertical photos in bright light. Added to this, there are only very brief moments when a bird can be lined up for a really good shot and so getting one as nice as this one is very rare. This bird is travelling very fast!Editing
The main editing was cropping the image a little bit to centralise it and then rotating it through 90 degrees as the bird was flying across with its wings vertical, as mentioned earlier.In my camera bag
I still use this Canon EOS 70D with 18-55mm and 75-300mm lenses. I also use a monopod when it is appropriate, but as mentioned earlier, not for flying bird shots.Feedback
Because of the speed of birds like this, it is very important to take very fast shots to get a good result. 1/1000 is an absolute minimum and better to use 1/2000 like this shot, or even faster still. I sometimes go up to 1/4000. So it is usually helpful to set the ISO quite well above what would normally be used for the prevailing lighting conditions. In this case an ISO of 2500 has been used even on a bright, cloudless day.
