Heron & vulture shots for comment Anahuac Houston Sept

A couple of images for comment. Both shot middle of the day, over cast, in Sept. 20D and EF 100-400.
1)Houston Anahuac: Heron: Tv 1/400; Av 18; ISO 1600.

2) Houston Anahuac2 Vulture: Tv 1/2000; Av 13; ISO 1600
Cropped (20% removed) and horizon rotated.

This is my first post, comments would be great.
Thanks,

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Hi nmac and welcome to the forum.

The images are a little on the small side so difficult to judge for their individual merits. From what I can see though the Vulture is kind of lost in the bakground making it difficult to spot but does show nice detail in the wings. I like what you have done with the shot of the Heron. The background in this shot is a nice contrast, and shows the birds natural habitat.

On another note it seems you might be setting the ISO to high when you don't need to. Unless light is really bad I would set the ISO to 400 set the camera to AV mode, the lens to it's fastest apeture and let the camera sellect the highest shutterspeed itself.

mojo_uk wrote:
Hi nmac and welcome to the forum.

The images are a little on the small side so difficult to judge for their individual merits. From what I can see though the Vulture is kind of lost in the bakground making it difficult to spot but does show nice detail in the wings. I like what you have done with the shot of the Heron. The background in this shot is a nice contrast, and shows the birds natural habitat.

On another note it seems you might be setting the ISO to high when you don't need to. Unless light is really bad I would set the ISO to 400 set the camera to AV mode, the lens to it's fastest apeture and let the camera sellect the highest shutterspeed itself.

I agree but I don't believe that's a vulture, it's too brown.

I'm amazed at the color and sense of scale.. it looks amazingly.. Eagle-ish...

In that area a Golden is not out of the question.. nor is the substantial Ferruginous hawk.. or the Black and zone tail hawks (though it's not a zone tail) Harris etc..

The all black tail.. .. hmmmm It doesn't look like a mississippi Kite,.

I'd place a bet that with the black tail and those amazing primaries it's an eagle,. Golden or Immature Bald.

Thanks for the comments, and I agree. These were taken when I was playing with the new camera and had it on 1600 and didn't notice. The one thing that I still find hard to remember that I can play with on the digital (got it 6 months ago) is the iso.

Here is the only other shot of the bird in question. As there were lots of vultures around and my knowledge of Texan birds is limited to say the least I just presumed it was one based on size.

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