Urban Hawk

[Loupey]

You get to see the kind of foregrounds and backgrounds I have to work with. Urban development is closing in from all sides

Anyway, I found this RTH hunting in the still dark gray morning. I figured I would push the 40D this morning and followed this hawk all over the field. Despite 5 strikes, it failed to catch a meal. All with the 300mm f/4L. The obvious ones with the 2x teleconverter.

The first one is ISO 1600. The others are either ISO 640 or 800. I think I've got the 40D dialed in to give me what I want. Starting to like it more and more.


Oh, sorry Canon_Bob - these were all manual focused

[mn shutterbug]

Nice shots, and I really like the last bif shot. The eye is really sharp.

[Dylan8i]

i really like the one comming toward the camera! although i think it would look much better if you cropped out the sky to the point you can't tell they are houses behind it.

[karen m.]

Very cool, Loupey.

[Loupey]

mn shutterbug, thanks - I too was quite surprised by that shot as it was ISO 800. For the conditions, it was clean (noise-wise).

Dylan - thank you. That shot is my favorite of the morning despite the urban background. I'm not yet happy with the post-processing though. Will work on it some more and see how it turns out.

Karen - thank you very much for looking and commenting!

[Yarrow]

As alway Loupey Great shots!

[Loupey]

Yarrow - thank you very much.


Here are extreme crops of two of the images to show the noise pattern at ISO 640 and 800 respectively. Not quite what I had envisioned but still fairly good at this level of magnification. BTW, you can see that my focusing lagged the eyes of the hawk by a few inches in the in-flight shot.

[paulnj]

I love that shot of the redtailed coming at you.

[Loupey]

Thank you very much, Paul. That's a kind compliment coming from a birder such as you.

[Jaedon]

I see your urban RT hawk and raise you one street lamp

[Loupey]

LOL, yes they are everywhere. On my drive down to SC last week, I must have seen a RT every 10 miles or so.

Here's one from this past August. Numerous but still a lot of fun to chase and photograph