Well....the winter eagles are coming back along the Merrimack River here in Massachusetts. finally and thanks to a large peregrine that was in a bad mood, this beauty flew fairly close by against a beautiful late afternoon cloudless blue sky....they aren't perfect, but they aren't bad for my first eagle shots of the winter
These were all shot with a D2X, 500 AFSII and TC 14 EII
nice going Jim , I might cool these off a bit myself, to deepen the sky blue and also ease off the red channel a bit in general. Not really a nit , just a thought
The WB is dead nuts for the time of day I shot these ( adjusted per the RR method in NC 4.4) and the sky wasn't a deeper blue...it was exactly this color.
I suppose, this is a question of....do I present it as it really was or do I modify the image presented to look like something it wasn't?
The brown of the birds glowed rather strongly with a reddish cast as these were shot about an hour before sunset and the sun was already getting fairly low. That's why I love shooting in long light.
Hi Jim. These are wonderful. I always look forward to your posts here. I know I'm going to see something special.
I'm not sure I understand the post processing comment from another member. It strikes me as very weird that someone else will tell you how your photos should look when they weren't even there. Also photography is an art, not a science. So how you, the photographer, want the photo to look is a subjective thing.
I'm really impressed. I was driving by and saw and impressive bird on Sunday. It was perced in a tree and while I am not good enough to be sure of what it was it looked like an eagle to me. Huge! I looked down at my longest lens ... a 50 ... and thought ... one day!
Your shots are inspiring.
hey hey , I said "I" Might , not to infer that you might or should
As for reality vs interpertation , I leave that up to the shooter as well. But if one is saying that "real" is better , I think that is also as condescending. I always find it interesting that the ones who harp loudest , the real "purists" , many of them swear by Velvia , the most unreal of all the films and the most loved
Karen80 wrote:
I'm not sure I understand the post processing comment from another member. It strikes me as very weird that someone else will tell you how your photos should look when they weren't even there. Also photography is an art, not a science. So how you, the photographer, want the photo to look is a subjective thing.
Cheers, Karen.
Hi:
I think that's me Karen is talking about. I don't want to tell anybody how their shots should look and I totally agree that it's subjective. John might offer that kind of opinion (not that he did!)but I have no businees in that arena. That is why I said "I'd" and not some catagorical statement like "it should be." Also, anybody who posts here knows I'm a beginner so take what I say with a grain of salt at least.(more if necessary)
On the subjective side, I'm prone to see shots as over sharpened (you will likely tell me that it was not sharpened at all!) and that is what I was talking about in the above post. Where some folks see perfection I often see digital as to edgy or something. It's me and likely my monitor that I am replacing this week (Samsung 214T on its way).
With regard to your comment that "It strikes me as very weird that someone else will tell you how your photos should look when they weren't even there."
Well, that strikes me as silly. If that is true then nobody can make a constructive comment or have anything to say about almost all photographs. This is not the case. Photographs can clearly be judged (although I'm certainly not one to do it for the most part) on a number points,,,exposure, composition, pp, without the person actually "being there." Nothing "weird" about it. To call someone "weird" for just stating an honest opinion is unhelpful IMHO. (hopefully my comment wasn't rude which is a different thing altogether.)
Anyway, I'd be proud of getting that shot as I'm a birder first and a photographer a distant second. The shot itself is great. My comments involve moving a slider slightly one way or another or entering a slightly different number into a dialogue box. Not a big deal. I hope it is taken as intended.
Jim,
First let me say these are really GREAT captures. I am hopeful that I can come close to capturing something like these before my local season is over.
I can see why there are some critical comments. I found the pictures a bit unsettling in that the edges seem to be more distinct than anything I have seen in life, for better or worse. Also there is more shadow detail than my eye expects to see. I speak this not as an expert but as someone who has recently tried shooting eagles perched in a tree with D2X, 600 mm of ED glass on a spotting scope, and the TC 14E. Your pics are better than my first attempt!
It seems that 12 MP in my case was a bit of overkill! I was surprised by my pics that I could produce more shadow detail (without significant noise) than my eye could see looking through camera or binoculars.
Do these look the same on your non compressed full sized images? Is this a very contrasty lens? How far away were you in these pics? Did you crop? Are you saving in adobe rbg and converting to srgb?
Absolutely fabulous shots Jim, as usual. The colors look just perfect to me, but then again it is always personal preference what you like in NC and of course the monitor calibrations maybe a little different as well. These shots just happen to look perfect on my monitor screen and I would not change anything as far as color balance is concerned.
These were shot at 5300 K and then balanced accordingly in NC 4.4.
The final; WB was just about 5700 which for a very low sun less than an hour before sunset is correct IMHO.
I have taken to shooting most of my D2X shots (outdoors) at 5300 and then balancing it later as this is the "native" D2X WB happiness point. This lessens noise on underexposed shots as well...not that I ever underexpose anything (yeah right!)
The 500 AFSII and TC14EII combination is extremely detailed and contrasty.
These were shot with the tone (contrast) set to LESS and left that way in NC 4.4 processing.
Images were saved as TIFF, resized in CS2 using plain old bicubic and then final sharpened (mildly I might add) for final output.
I intentionally overexposed these a hair in order to pick up the shadow detail and not incur any noise at ISO 400. I recovered the highlights in NC 4.4 by applying -.67 EV in the Advanced RAW Palette, then did my typical mid gamma adjustment prior to saving as TIFF.
, the most unreal of all the films and the most loved 
I don't want to tell anybody how their shots should look and I totally agree that it's subjective. John might offer that kind of opinion (not that he did!)but I have no businees in that arena. That is why I said "I'd" and not some catagorical statement like "it should be." Also, anybody who posts here knows I'm a beginner so take what I say with a grain of salt at least.(more if necessary) 