It is a nice shot, interesting with good background and the bird is large enough in the frame.
It would be better for me if it were framed down a bit and to the right so the bird is flying and looking into the empty space.
It is a bit soft to my eye. The rule of thumb is shutter >= 1/effective mm, 1/650 sports, or 1/100 stills. If you have IS and the photo is still you might get it down to 1/100 with 400mm. But in this case it is moving so >=1/650 would be needed for sharp. I would move up the ISO.
Thanks for the input. You are right I did not take into account the "effective" mm. Is there a plug in that may help the sharpness?
Unfortunately to the right is the edge of the frame. Fast bird, could not keep up.
Beautiful background with the softness nicely complementing the subject. Bird images really require backgrounds which are complementary and not competing with the subject. The alignment of the bird with the shore, wings over water make this especially appealing.
I think you could open up to f5.6 or possibly faster and have more room to shoot with a faster shutter speed. You probably could bump your ISO as well, as Scott S suggested.
Bird could be sharper and you might want to shoot closer to 1/1000s.
As Scott said, ideally the bird flies into the frame (flying into more open space, rather than exiting).
As far as sharpness, what do you use to process your images now? I shoot Canon, so I dont know what gets bundled with the Nikon cameras, but if there is a RAW processing enginie, should be some (nonselective) sharpening, at least.
Very nice and welcome to the forum. I don't think I can add to Scott S and Scott G's comments.
If the original image is RAW and you don't have, you might download ViewNX (free) from Nikon's site. It will process the RAW file and allow you to extract the most possible from the image in post processing.
Also, again if you do not have, you can download Capture NX2 from Nikon's site which is a full featured processor especially for NEF files as well as jpgs and tiffs. I believe the demo is good for 30 days.
I've taken the liberty of playing a bit in NX2, if you object I'll remove the post. I tried to pull some detail out of the bird, don't know if that was accomplished or not...sometimes I tend to be a little heavy-handed with the contrast
Thank you all for the welcome and taking it easy on me.
I appreciate every ones advise and will put it into practice on my next outing.
Bob, feel free to work on anything I post. That is what I am here for but thank you for offering. Another point of view is always welcome.
Again many thanks for all the replies.
Tommy
