Black Crowned Night Heron

[Harmonicat]

Black Crowned Night Heron in flight which I photographed yesterday - Nikon Z9 with 200-500 f5.6 @ ISO 560 f8.0 and 1/1250. Unsure on the final composition so I've included both my cropped version as well as the full image, any advice or critiques accepted. Thanks!

 

[The_Wild_Chesapeake]

The first thing I noticed is the horizon (well, shore line) is not level. Occasionally for creative purposes you may want to have a horizon not level (i.e. "dutch angle"), but I don't think this is one of those times. For birds in flight, I would try to never go below 1/2000 minimum, and really 1/2500 or 1/3200 is better. What you have here, 1/1250 probably is degrading your sharpness. Also, there is nothing in the background of any specific interest, so to jack up your shutter speed, you probably could safely increase ISO to 800, and open your aperture without much or any loss as to the bird depth-of-field. If you actually captured this image at 2 PM or so in the afternoon, the light is still rather harsh so you have to deal with that. Go back at sunrise or towards sunset and the light will be more pleasant. Also, the bird is somewhat blown out and there isn't much feather detail. If you are just starting out, not bad, but in a year's worth of experience later, you will look at this image and wonder what you were thinking. We all do that.

 

[Harmonicat]

The first thing I noticed is the horizon (well, shore line) is not level. Occasionally for creative purposes you may want to have a horizon not level (i.e. "dutch angle"), but I don't think this is one of those times. For birds in flight, I would try to never go below 1/2000 minimum, and really 1/2500 or 1/3200 is better. What you have here, 1/1250 probably is degrading your sharpness. Also, there is nothing in the background of any specific interest, so to jack up your shutter speed, you probably could safely increase ISO to 800, and open your aperture without much or any loss as to the bird depth-of-field. If you actually captured this image at 2 PM or so in the afternoon, the light is still rather harsh so you have to deal with that. Go back at sunrise or towards sunset and the light will be more pleasant. Also, the bird is somewhat blown out and there isn't much feather detail. If you are just starting out, not bad, but in a year's worth of experience later, you will look at this image and wonder what you were thinking. We all do that.

Awesome, thanks for the in depth feedback. The horizon was definitely something I considered but wasn’t sure about. As for shutter speed again that’s something which I am conscious of but definitely struggle with nailing in the field when I’m switching between subjects. I had been photographing a stationary bird so I’d lowered it and increased my aperture for wider DoF and then when this one flew across I wasn’t quick enough in changing my settings (maybe I should explore some functions on the Z9 to quickly change this since it’s a bit of a habit I have).

Thanks again

 

[PhotoLover]

The horizon is not level, but that didn't bother me much. However, this is very easy to fix in programs such as Lightroom. The highlights do look blown a bit.

With a 5.6 lens on my crop sensor, I rarely need to stop down; I suspect the same is true on your Z9. You've generally got plenty of DOF; for this shot the bird is far enough away that 5.6 would have been better. You might want to play with a DOF calculator for 5.6 aperture and 500mm focal length at various distances to get a feel for how much DOF you really have with that setup. (Note: everybody gets caught out sometimes with the right settings for the last shot, and not this one which is what happened with you it seems .... )

1250 is slow for BIF, that said, looking closely at the eyes, I don't think sharpness is bad; faster would have been better. I think the background is not great (it's annoying how often birds refuse to give me a nice background) though shooting at 5.6 would have helped a little.

If I was post-processing this in LR I'd attempt to make the background nicer. Steve has a nice video out on using Adobe AI denoise to, well, denoise, but as part of that workflow he also likes to mask the background and soften it (look for the video) by reducing sharpness and texture along with using the basic denoise in the mask. While masking the background I'd probably desature it just a bit, because the background colors do not make me happy. Here I'd also mask on the subject to try and get more detail in it (less highlights, more texture and clarity, etc).

Finally, again if you are using LR, I'd experiment with the lens blur tool; results vary quite a bit but if the subject is in a very different focal plane than the background, it can sometimes clean things up a lot; this picture definitely looks like candidate for trying that tool.

Some of the suggestions are LR specific, but most tools should allow you to level, mask on just the background and soften it, etc.

I assume you were in burst mode and this was your favorite composition from the burst. For a situation like this, I'd capture at least 10 shots in the burst, probably more.

This shot is okay given the conditions and subject. Better light and a wider aperture (for a softer background) with faster shutter speed are the main things I'd want different at the time the shot was taken. The only fix for better light is being there at a different time, of course. Can you verify for us what time the picture was actually taken?

 

[Harmonicat]

The horizon is not level, but that didn't bother me much. However, this is very easy to fix in programs such as Lightroom. The highlights do look blown a bit.

With a 5.6 lens on my crop sensor, I rarely need to stop down; I suspect the same is true on your Z9. You've generally got plenty of DOF; for this shot the bird is far enough away that 5.6 would have been better. You might want to play with a DOF calculator for 5.6 aperture and 500mm focal length at various distances to get a feel for how much DOF you really have with that setup. (Note: everybody gets caught out sometimes with the right settings for the last shot, and not this one which is what happened with you it seems .... )

1250 is slow for BIF, that said, looking closely at the eyes, I don't think sharpness is bad; faster would have been better. I think the background is not great (it's annoying how often birds refuse to give me a nice background) though shooting at 5.6 would have helped a little.

If I was post-processing this in LR I'd attempt to make the background nicer. Steve has a nice video out on using Adobe AI denoise to, well, denoise, but as part of that workflow he also likes to mask the background and soften it (look for the video) by reducing sharpness and texture along with using the basic denoise in the mask. While masking the background I'd probably desature it just a bit, because the background colors do not make me happy. Here I'd also mask on the subject to try and get more detail in it (less highlights, more texture and clarity, etc).

Finally, again if you are using LR, I'd experiment with the lens blur tool; results vary quite a bit but if the subject is in a very different focal plane than the background, it can sometimes clean things up a lot; this picture definitely looks like candidate for trying that tool.

Some of the suggestions are LR specific, but most tools should allow you to level, mask on just the background and soften it, etc.

I assume you were in burst mode and this was your favorite composition from the burst. For a situation like this, I'd capture at least 10 shots in the burst, probably more.

This shot is okay given the conditions and subject. Better light and a wider aperture (for a softer background) with faster shutter speed are the main things I'd want different at the time the shot was taken. The only fix for better light is being there at a different time, of course. Can you verify for us what time the picture was actually taken?

Great point about masking and blurring I'll have to consider that as an option moving forward. I did remove some random bits and bobs that were in the background that I found distracting but it was a bit tough to get a nice background overall with a small group of these Herons just camping out in a field of lillypads.

This was a burst and was one of the view compositions and positions which I enjoyed of what was captured, the shutter speed did also result in some motion blurring / losses in sharpness on other shots which was unfortunate about that setting.

I appreciate your advice and will definitely try to apply them next time I'm in the field, hopefully this evening if all goes well