this was taken a couple weeks ago in Idaho on a overcast day with 500mm f4 is canon w/1/4 extender @ 700mm iso400 f/8 320sec. for the long shot,it came out not to bad, what do you think? any help would be welcome.
I think that f/5.6 might have been better because it would further blur the background and probably lose nothing in terms of subject sharpness.
The eagle is a little soft and lacking in fine detail. Was the lens on a tripod ? If not then you would have been at the limits of hand-holdability in terms of sharpness for a stationary subject. Maybe the tree top was moving. I'd prefer to increase the ISO and speed up the sutter speed. This will get the subject sharper and the additional noise can be cleaned up in software later on. Adding fine detail to a soft image is a little trickier
The amount of blur in the background would be ok as is if the subject was sharper.
The idea is good, but you've got to use a tripod with wildlife photography, for the many reasons Alan suggested. I know you can't control moving flora and fauna, but it will reduce unneeded movement for you.
Also, there is too much negative space in the upper right-hand corner. I would suggest a tighter crop to show more of the eagle.
Last thing...it's a little too warm for me...try cooling it a little in a color temp slider or removing some of the yellow in the color balance tool in PS.
Also, don't know what the brown stuff is running down on the left
side of the pic, but if you could've moved a little more left to take
it out and left the green background, the background would've
looked a whole lot better.
