Eagle in Flight - Help please

[jprzybyla]

I know this is Christina's thread but I feel compelled to comment on Dave Humphries focusing problems with the D7100. If the active focusing point is put on a subject that area should be in sharp focus and then becoming soft as the depth of field trails off. It is possible that your lens and camera do not match up well. Cameras and lenses have to meet quality control within a range. Most times all is well but if a particular lens happens to be a +3 and a camera is a +3 that puts the focusing at +6 and out of acceptable range. If the lens is a +3 and the camera is a -3 they balance out to perfect spot on focus. There are many other combinations possible providing varying degrees of focusing. You might think of sending the camera and lens to Nikon to be adjusted. What I described is why a professional photographer when receiving a copy of a lens that doesn't focus to his expectations will send it back for another copy until one is found to match the camera. I believe that your D7100 had AF Fine Tuning in the menu but my experience with that is that it can really mess things up.

I always use focus release without a problem. I do not use Active D Lighting that if for those who shoot JPEG to open the shadows extending the dynamic range. Shooting RAW I prefer to do that in post processing. I have VR set to on but rarely does it come into play because my shutter speeds are too high for it to work. I have the ISO Sensitivity set to Auto ISO with a minimum of 100, a maximum of 3200 and a minimum shutter speed of 1/500. I noticed in reading the thread that you wrote that you had yours set to a maximum of 1100 or 1000 and Christina in another thread mentioned the same thing. If you limit the ISO to 1100 in many instances the camera will lower the shutter speed, most likely too slow for flying birds. That may be why your flying birds were soft. In the bright light of Florida shooting BIF at a shutter speed of 1/2500 most time the ISO is over 1000.

[Brownbear]

Hi Joe,

Thank you for posting... Everything you share with Dave, only benefits my learning...

Interesting about such a high iso even in the bright light... I will keep experimenting with it.

[Cantab]

I visited a bird of prey sanctuary today... so here is a better eagle shot for now, only because I was able to get closer... One day I will manage one in flight.

Unfortunately I missed the in flight opportunity and I only have the jpeg because my new camera wouldn't focus and I couldn't figure out why. I thought I might have broken my camera and in the process I reset my camera to the standard settings. I eventually figured out that I had set my lens to manual focus the day before and I forgot to change it back to manual focus.

The image was underexposed so I lightened it up and used Topaz denoise with a very light touch and it seemed to work fine. So I think the denoise programs work fine if it is just a light touch.



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Christina, I'm planning to visit a raptor centre upisland in a few days so hope to get some good photos -- although it does feel a bit like cheating. Congratulations on your eagle shots in post #39.

[Brownbear]

Hi Bruce,

It is cheating but I also think it is a good way to get some practice on birds in flight... At this show you usually have about 3 tries to get an inflight shot, as the let the birds fly 2-3 times. That said, it is still really hard because you have to shoot around a crowds of people and work from whatever spot you can find, and of course if one can't figure out how to work their new lens it is all the more challenging.


I assume this is post 39... I can do better, and will do, eventually.

Good luck. I'm looking forward to seeing your photos. And I will be visiting the bird sanctuary again for practice, but I do intend to find my own wild eagle.

[nimitzbenedicto]

Hi Bruce,

It is cheating but I also think it is a good way to get some practice on birds in flight... At this show you usually have about 3 tries to get an inflight shot, as the let the birds fly 2-3 times. That said, it is still really hard because you have to shoot around a crowds of people and work from whatever spot you can find, and of course if one can't figure out how to work their new lens it is all the more challenging.


I assume this is post 39... I can do better, and will do, eventually.

Good luck. I'm looking forward to seeing your photos. And I will be visiting the bird sanctuary again for practice, but I do intend to find my own wild eagle.

My gosh, with your tenacity and determination,
I know you'll eventually get your own - wild eagle.........

[Brownbear]

Thank you Victor.. I do have a few shots of my own wild eagle in flight just none that are good enough, yet.

In the tree tops and way too high to photograph, from a few months ago..

My gosh, with your tenacity and determination,
I know you'll eventually get your own - wild eagle.........

[jprzybyla]

Hey Christina (in Florida Hey is used instead of Hi) when you finally get your chance for an eagle in perfect light and position how are you going to set your exposure for the bird? What controls the exposure?

[Brownbear]

Hey Joe,

I plan to have my SS set at 2000 or 2500 (or perhaps 3200 (if the light allows) and the aperture set to F8...

Then to check my exposure by metering off of the dark bark of a tree in the same lighting conditions, and adjust my settings for iso, and perhaps exposure compensation to set the exposure.

If I see that I am going to need an iso of greater than 1000 I would prefer to change to a larger aperture. If the eagle is far enough away hopefully the DOF will be sufficient, but if not I will drop my shutter speed to 1600 and pan.

OR

I will try the shutter speed at 2500, Aperture 8, matrix metering, auto iso set to kick in at a minimum SS of 500 with the max iso set to 3200. Which will likely be easier because I will not have to worry about whether I capture the eagle against the blue sky, a dark tree or over the water.


Shutter speed, aperture and iso control the exposure... I suppose you are trying to tell me that I should try auto iso with the iso set to a maximum of 3200 but I'm wary of trying this only because if I get my perfect shot but it turns out to be super noisy at full size I may not be able to fix the noise without sacrificing detail... And if I do it my way I may get less than a perfect shot because I will have to use a slower shutter speed or sacrifice DOF... So perhaps I will do both.

I plan on experimenting more with auto iso on dark birds in flight, and hopefully by the time I receive another opportunity for an eagle shot I will have figured it out.

Thank you, Joe. I await your comments on auto iso... an iso of 3200 is just plain scary to me but....

Hey Christina (in Florida Hey is used instead of Hi) when you finally get your chance for an eagle in perfect light and position how are you going to set your exposure for the bird? What controls the exposure?

[jprzybyla]

Go with the OR and expose for the white head and tail. If I were shooting it I would set -1 EV to keep the white highlights from clipping. Let the ISO be whatever the camera needs. Bald Eagles are a bird that needs two exposures, one for the white head and tail and another for the brown body and wings. Post processing in Lightroom use the global Basic Module to get the exposure correct for the background and use the Adjustment Brush for the exposure of the white and brown... two different exposures. Brown and white birds and black and white birds need different exposures for each color.

The problem with limiting your ISO to 1000 for fear of noise is that if the camera reaches 1000 and cannot go above it must lower the shutter speed. So then you have an image with maybe less noise that is soft. Remember the Exposure Triangle...Shutter Speed at one corner, Aperture at another, and ISO at the third corner. If Shutter Speed and Aperture are held fixed the only thing that can change to give the correct exposure is the ISO. Hold the ISO and Aperture and the Shutter Speed must change.

[Brownbear]

Hi Joe,

I've thought about it some more and my next time around with the wild eagle I will try auto iso set to a max of 3200.

I have 3 spots where I know I might sight an eagle if I'm lucky. In these locales the eagles typically perch on the top of the tallest trees, and I can't predict where they will fly, and it is always early morning or late in the day in low light, so using auto iso makes sense.

At the bird sanctuary the light is better because the birds are out at mid day, brighter light but it is a harsh light. Here I have two chances to capture the eagle in flight, but over a shorter flight path. Whereas in the wild the eagles flight path is longer but not predictable so auto iso makes sense.

[Brownbear]

Hi Joe,

Okay. The next time around I will do exactly that. Thank you for the tip on setting the EV and the editing process - will do.

Yes, I know and it is too hard to change the iso on the fly so I will try the auto iso set to a max of 3200, for sure.

And I will post the result as soon as I manage to find and capture the eagle. It might take some time because they are not always out and about, and sometimes they just sit there and refuse to fly.

Your advice is always appreciated. Thank you.

Go with the OR and expose for the white head and tail. If I were shooting it I would set -1 EV to keep the white highlights from clipping. Let the ISO be whatever the camera needs. Bald Eagles are a bird that needs two exposures, one for the white head and tail and another for the brown body and wings. Post processing in Lightroom use the global Basic Module to get the exposure correct for the background and use the Adjustment Brush for the exposure of the white and brown... two different exposures. Brown and white birds and black and white birds need different exposures for each color.

The problem with limiting your ISO to 1000 for fear of noise is that if the camera reaches 1000 and cannot go above it must lower the shutter speed. So then you have an image with maybe less noise that is soft. Remember the Exposure Triangle...Shutter Speed at one corner, Aperture at another, and ISO at the third corner. If Shutter Speed and Aperture are held fixed the only thing that can change to give the correct exposure is the ISO. Hold the ISO and Aperture and the Shutter Speed must change.

[jprzybyla]

Hey Christina here is an example of how something must change. I had the settings that I have written about in ISO Sensitivity... minimum 100, maximum 3200, minimum shutter speed of 500. I shot this owl in deep shade the ISO reached 3200, it could not expose at that so it lowered the shutter speed to 320. In this instance VR just might have helped.

This is straight out of the camera as shot. ISO 3200

[Brownbear]

Hola Joe,

Thank you for sharing. Lovely photo and I don't see a speck of noise Very reassuring.

While I have your full attention, with respect to WB, I noticed that when photographing owls in the daylight under auto or sunlight WB, they are more golden coloured because the sun is shining on them... But in the shade they are greyer.. What is your opinion on correcting WB on birds?

[jprzybyla]

Hola Joe,

Thank you for sharing. Lovely photo and I don't see a speck of noise Very reassuring.

While I have your full attention, with respect to WB, I noticed that when photographing owls in the daylight under auto or sunlight WB, they are more golden coloured because the sun is shining on them... But in the shade they are greyer.. What is your opinion on correcting WB on birds?

In the camera I always use Auto WB and then correct in post processing if necessary. Remember we are capturing reflected light so the amount of light changes what the camera can capture and how much light is reflected.

[Brownbear]

Thank you Joe

[Brownbear]

Joe... Here are a couple of eagle shots taken at the wild life sanctuary using auto iso set at a max of 3200...

Manual SS 3200 F 6.7 (extender on camera) iso 2000 Matrix Metering Exp Bias -.33



Manual SS 2500 F 6.7 (extender on camera) iso 900 Matrix Metering Exp Bias -.6.7



I am happy with the level of noise, and I noted that the camera changed the iso quite a bit with the higher shutter speed, so I will keep experimenting with it... I have yet to find my eagle in the wild but I will keep trying.

PS The birds at this sanctuary are rescue birds and free to fly as they wish all day long.

[Cantab]

Christina, at the risk of asking a very stupid question, I noted the differ exposure biases for the two eagle shots -- both of which look nicely exposed to me. Initially, I thought these were exposure biases/compensations you were doing on the camera but I then thought how in the world did you guess at these quite different numbers. Then it dawned on me that these were exposure changes you made in LR. Is that correct?

[Brownbear]

Hi Bruce,

There are no stupid questions, and if there are than it is more likely that I have asked all of them. Truly I'm delighted that someone would ask me a question

I always check my histogram for exposure, and yes, and I end up changing the exposure bias all the time to my best guess.

Each of the above shots were likely taken a couple of minutes apart, so I likely upped or decreased the shutter speed (I can't remember which) according to what I saw. What is totally different about these shots is that this time around I used auto iso with the maximum set to 3200, following Joe's recommendation to try it and not to be so timid about using a high iso...

So the camera changed the iso according to the lighting conditions ie; depending where exactly I caught the eagle in flight.. There is no way I could of figured out how to change the iso so quickly so I think it was a good thing for me to learn. It is easier to guess the shutter speed and aperture and change these than to guess the iso. Albeit as I experiment I hope to be able to memorize the appropriate isos and change accordingly... The auto iso worked well on my birds (thank you Joe) but not so well on my bears.

I think because I change the exposure compensation so often it is not that hard for me to guess. So no the changes were not made in LR, both photos are pretty much as photographed likely with a small S curve and WB the exposure is due to the auto iso. (And I have several bad shots of this eagle from this attempt that I didn't post )

Hope that is helpful..

Christina, at the risk of asking a very stupid question, I noted the differ exposure biases for the two eagle shots -- both of which look nicely exposed to me. Initially, I thought these were exposure biases/compensations you were doing on the camera but I then thought how in the world did you guess at these quite different numbers. Then it dawned on me that these were exposure changes you made in LR. Is that correct?

[Cantab]

Christina, thank you for your answer. I'll have to refresh my memory on making exposure compensation changes.

Before going digital last year, I'd dealt for a number of decades with manual exposure and "instinctive" changes to adjust for backlighting, ocean water, etc. But I never did a lot of birds in flight where everything can happen very rapidly. So I've broken down and used auto ISO on several occasions. It worked well recently with a collection of BIF (butterflies in flight) and stationary butterfly shots at the Butterfly Gardens near Butchart Gardens. As an aside, a big problem with posting is that I take photos much much more rapidly than I ever seem to do the pp!

[Brownbear]

My pleasure... I start where I think I should be and adjust from there. My husband accompanied me up the mountain one day when I was trying for bear shot, and naturally because he was trying to help, every time I stopped to adjust my settings he kept nudging me telling me about all the great shots I was missing.

I was very surprised to see how the auto iso worked out and I will continue to experiment with it.

Something we have in common!

As an aside, a big problem with posting is that I take photos much much more rapidly than I ever seem to do the pp!

Bruce, thank you for all your comments and help. Truly appreciated.

PS I just remembered that you are visiting a raptor center... If they let the birds fly, find a spot with the best lighting, higher up then everyone else and stake out your position.