Second outing with my 7D + 400 5.6

I think this is a northern harrier, but that is just my best guess using my ipad bird app
These were taken at Coyote Hills regional park on the eastern shore of the San Francisco Bay. He or she was crusing over the marsh looking for supper I think. I am still trying to get the hang of the right settings with this camera both for shooting and post as you can really tell from the noise in the 3rd shot. Some of that is pollen floating in the air too however. The bottom line is that I'm having fun though, and that's what matters!

Great work so far!

I think they look pretty nice. Looks like you are shooting around sun down or golden hour which I find is tough to get Birds to look right since the angle of the sun is so low that they get washed out with that golden light or there is a ton of shadow. I tried today since I rented the 400 5.6 and that golden light I think makes things look soft since it is a softer light I guess. Maybe some have good luck at that time of day like you did but I dont seem to. Yours look nice though and you got close enough to get the detail. I posted a thread a few hours ago with the birds I got and I am wondering if the 400 I got is a lemon, but then again every lens I put on my T2i seems to not produce sharp pics consistantly like others get. I shot in continous mode to have a better chance at sharp pics. The T2i just cant handle the AF needed it seems.

That 7D seems to be key in geting good shots like yours with BIF. I had a hell of time today getting in focus sharp shots today with the Vulture that was circling overhead watching my dog. I had to add a highpass layer to sharpen them up enough but the eyes stil were not as clear as I would like. Your shots the birds eyes look to be in focus and sharp.

Nicely done so far. It's indeed a Harrier and looks to be a female. I don't see any noise in the third picture at all. Photographing birds is fun and can be addictive.

You know what he may be seeing is the same thing I am seeing. I see some pixelation as far as the transition between pixels being blocky looking but that usually has more to do with the quality of the monitor being able to display pixels properly. My monitors are junk TN panels and sometimes I see this with my photos, but it could also be the compression into a jpeg was not at the highest quality. I see this in my monitor at work since it is a cheap POS Viewsonic and it has no ability to display pictures properly and the pixels are very blocky looking if the compression is poor. I would say that a simple redo of the photo and saving into a tiff that is cropped to reduce file size would solve it. I got around the quality degrade with jpeg compression that way a few times. I turned what would of been 30mb tiff into a 3mb tiff that way.

txcanon wrote in post #13701924
Nicely done so far. It's indeed a Harrier and looks to be a female. I don't see any noise in the third picture at all. Photographing birds is fun and can be addictive.

You got it right,, Have fun, you (me) learn better that way, Well done!

Fun is what it's all about itsed, and you should be having fun as you're doing an admirable job with those captures.
I'm w/Brad i.e. I don't see any terrible level of noise in the 3rd shot either....does that mean I have a "high-end" monitor?