Juvinile Red Shouldered Hawk - feeding

[redrew]

Canon 1D Mark IIn, Sigma 50-500mm at 500mm, 1/160 @ f18

[Ken Curtis]

You achieved good lighting on the hawk. Yes, its face is a little dark, but quite clear. I don't even mind the white sky, as there are enough details in the bird to hold my attention. Did you use a flash?

[Cantab]

Rollin, this was presumably a tripod shot since you were at 1/160 at 500mm? Did the hawk stay in this location for a chunk of time or were you simply well prepared with a monopod maybe in your hand?

[redrew]

Ken, I agree that the background sky is bright. I can mask it and make it darker but it seems to then look unnatural. I can dodge the face a little which would help. Yes, I did use flash, Canon 580EX set at -1/3 elevated about five inches over the lens on my Wimberley. It is rare that I do not use flash for birds even if out of range. One of the benefits of Evaluative Through The Lens (E-TTL) is that if one is judicious in its use as a fill flash it will in most cases enhance the color and resolution but still look natural. However I feel that to much luminance of flash is worse than no flash. Most of the time with birds and wildlife I adjust the flash from -1/3 to -2/3.

[Scott Stephen]

Seriously! 500mm on a 1.6x crop body at just 1/160th is impressive considering how sharp this is. Nice shot.

[redrew]

This hawk, though wild, was being fed by some neighbors who invited me over to photograph it, so it stuck around until it had its crop full. I took about 35 photographs of the bird. I was using a tripod for this particular image but I also took some hand held.