Hawk Eye
Red Tailed Hawk
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May, 2021Views
519
Likes
Awards
People's Choice in The Beauty of the Color Brown Photo Challenge
People's Choice in thecolorbrown Photo Challenge
Hidden Gem Award
Peer Award
Top Choice
Magnificent Capture
Absolute Masterpiece
Superb Composition
Superior Skill
All Star
Genius
Virtuoso
Outstanding Creativity
Top Ranks
Top 20 rank week 1
Top 20 rankTop 20 rank week 1
Top 10 rankTop 10 rank week 1
Categories
Platinum
Platinum
Ultimate
JayneBug
December 08, 2021
Impressive image and capture. Congratulations on your award. Hawk Eye is a beauty!
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JayneBug
September 22, 2022
Striking portrait and the People's Choice for "The Beauty of the Color Brown" challenge. My congratulations and appreciation for entering this wonderful image and capture.
PRO
Same photographer See allBehind The Lens
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Behind The Lens
Location
This photo was taken in Brevard County, FloridaTime
I captured this image about 2 PM, when the ambient light was generally bright and harsh.Lighting
Thankfully, the bird was perched under large overhanging trees that gently filtered the sunlight, causing a soft but low light illumination on the bird.Equipment
I was using my Nikon D300 with a Nikkor 70-300 zoom lens, cranked out to 300 because the bird was a good distance from me. I was not using a tripod, but was able to steady my stance well enough to capture this image with negligible camera shake, even at the relatively slow 1/125 shutter speed. My aperature, being wide open due to the limited light, required bumping up the ISO to 640 to get the right exposure. Even so, there is very little noise in the resulting image. My hat is off to Nikon for their terrific Vibration Reduction System and noise reduction feature that made this low existing light shot possible.Inspiration
This bird, which i believe to be a Red-tailed Hawk, is both beautiful and colorful. The heart shaped nostril opening is especially interesting and shows up well in this closeup portrait.Editing
Very little post processing was done on this image other than cropping slightly, and minor contrast, color and sharpness adjustments.In my camera bag
I have two Nikon cameras, a D300 that was used for this image, and a D500. I also have an assortment of lenses of various focal lengths. My most recent purchase, a Sigma 150-600, is great for distant subjects but is difficult to hold steady, especially with longer shutter speeds. As a general rule of thumb, without a tripod, you need to use a shutter speed that is at least equal to or faster than the recriprocal of the lens focal length x the crop sensor multiplier for the camera it is mounted on. For instance, my Nikon camera has smaller that full sized sensor resulting in an adjusted focal length of 1.5 times the lens focal length. So, my 600 MM lens has an adjusted focal length of 900 MM when mounted on my Nikon D500 camera. So the minimum shutter speed should be 1/900th of a second or faster to avoid camera shake.Feedback
Getting the right exposure is a very important element in capturing great images. Existing light can vary greatly, so being able to choose the appropriate camera settings to insure a proper exposure is a skill that must be learned and practiced. I encourage everyone to learn about the relationship between the three exposure controls - aperture, shutter speed and ISO (Sensor sensitivity) and how to use them appropriately. Also, I was fortunate to get a sharp image of the hawk while hand-holding my camera with a telephoto lens. But it would have been better to use a tripod. So I recommend the use of a tripod whenever possible to minimize the risk camera shake ruining the shot.
