Red Kite

Sion

Hi, I took these pictures today for one of my university projects. This is the first time Ive tried photographing birds so the whole Al Servo settings etc was new to me. This is the closest I could get to the birds with the set up that I have. 70-200 +1.4 extender on a cropped body. I did find the exposure slightly tricky - ISO was on 400 and shutter speed of around 1250 -1600 mostly at f5.6.

Some of these pictures have been cropped slightly in Lightroom however I was wondering if you could suggest ways in which I can improve these images. Plus maybe useful tips for shooting birds in flight in future.

Thanks

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larger copies can been seen at http://sion-prys.smugmug.com/Nature/Biological-Photography-and/10439611_rWJoU#757639002_nxTCZ

Maestro

Kites are such handsome raptors...nice BIFs and beautiful blue sky. The light in some is especially good. I like the way it is hitting the feathers. Numbers 1 and 4 stand out to me because of the sharp eye contact but number 2 is a close runner-up because of the inclusion of the other kites in the background. It shows the somewhat frenetic feeding in which kites engage when looking for insects on the fly. With your set-up I think you did very well. No suggestions from me. Everything looks good.

raptorcaptor

Very nice!

Sion

cheers for the feedback both. Much appreciated

Harryb

You did very well with your setup and with some extremely difficult exposures. I would have tried to bring out the shadowed areas more in my post processing.