Osprey

[Manfred M]

I was out with my daughter yesterday evening just before sunset, trying to see what happened to a nesting pair of osprey that we saw a couple of weeks ago. No action at all at the nest, so we drove even further into the country and saw another nest, this one had the osprey there. The setting was far from ideal; the light was behind the bird and it kept watch to the south-east. A more traditional shot would have been to get a bit of the setting sun to illuminate the bird, but it was having none of that and kept the sun behind it. The marshlands and water meant I had limited shooting locations. I'm not normally a bird photographer.

Anyways, I did about 1-1/3 EV exposure compensation so as to get some detail of the bird without blowing out the sky. I used a Sigma 150 - 500mm racked out to 500mm. Shutter speed was a relatively slow 1/500th and the camera was set to ISO 1600. These are crops from a full frame camera and the shots were hand-held. When I got them onto my computer, the backlighting game me some great detailing of the feathers, and while the background looks white, it's not; just a very light gray. There is some motion blur on the wing tips that worked out well.I did a bit of PP work on the RAW files. I tried vignetting, B&W, etc and really did find that those techniques did not add to what I had already done. The high keys seems to work best of the things I've tried so far. The bird is just above the nest so the crop is already tight and small pieces of nest came out in PP.

Any suggestions?

[jeeperman]

Nice work Manfred, backlighting/sidelighting can make things tough. You handled it well. Nice detail and I view the slight wing movement as a bonus.

[Bobobird]

Nice and sharp. Well done.

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Manfred,

I'd love to see and shoot an Osprey, but they are still very rare here in UK.

Any suggestions?

Not really, you seem to have all the basics very competently covered.

I use Local Contrast Enhancement (USM with a small % amount, wide radius and no threshold) on most of my bird shots, that said, this wouldn't need much; I'd try 10% and 200px radius on this if mine, but you'll need to check this doesn't push any desired detail into black or white clipping, may be best to exclude the sky from this process because as you say; it is just right as it is.

It definitely looks like it has you "under surviellance"

[FrankMi]

The first one looks so close and intent that it's about to land on your camera!

[Donald]

I agree with the comments above. Very good images. Given the challenges faces; e.g. lighting, I think the choices made as to how to create and present these images have been totally justified.

Dave to photograph Ospreys, you need to get up here. This nest is quite near us and, hopefully, the three eggs should be hatching between today and Wednesday.

[Panama Hat & Camera]

Manfred,
Two great pictures. The photos couldn't be better! Congratulations!

[Manfred M]

Hi Manfred,

I'd love to see and shoot an Osprey, but they are still very rare here in UK.



Not really, you seem to have all the basics very competently covered.

I use Local Contrast Enhancement (USM with a small % amount, wide radius and no threshold) on most of my bird shots, that said, this wouldn't need much; I'd try 10% and 200px radius on this if mine, but you'll need to check this doesn't push any desired detail into black or white clipping, may be best to exclude the sky from this process because as you say; it is just right as it is.

It definitely looks like it has you "under surviellance"

Thank you to everyone for the replies.

Dave - I did use the USM on the image; I went with 0.9 pixels, 200% sharpening and 0 threshold. I tried your suggested settings and found it really did not sharpen things up all that much.

[Dave Humphries]

Thank you to everyone for the replies.

Dave - I did use the USM on the image; I went with 0.9 pixels, 200% sharpening and 0 threshold. I tried your suggested settings and found it really did not sharpen things up all that much.

Hi Manfred,

You may have mis-understood my ramblings, those settings don't sharpen an image, they perform a Local Contrast Enhancement, follow the link to read the CiC tutorial on it.

Cheers,