Tower, Permission to....

[Chris Calohan]

(From Top Gun)

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

Chuckle.

You could enhance the idea by cloning a set of headphones and a mike onto the heron.   

[polaris-14]

Extremely sharp.

Let me know if this is not an appropriate place to ask, but I have a question with regards to choosing the appropriate aperture for this type of shots. Would you mind sharing some of your thought process in choosing the appropriate f/stop for this type of shots so to have enough depth of field for the object in the picture?

[Chris Calohan]

This guy literally rose up out of a marsh and flew by so close that I could damn near have touched him. I was shooting at 1/1250 a sec and the aperture the camera chose was 8. It was early so I had to jack up the ISO to make the 1250 as my primary subjects that morning were wood ducks who fly faster than a speeding bullet. ISO was at 500 but it's a Nikon D810 and I don't get annoyed with noise until I get into the 1600 to 3200 range. Even then, under the right circumstances, I can noise ninja that to quite pleasant results.

[spidermike]

The aim is always to have the eyes in focus but as you will see, the wings are wonderfully sharp but the head/eye is just OOF - with a bird this size you need to either be very careful with keeping focus point on the eye (lest it pick up the edge of the wing) or choose f11 to f16. But considering the quick response you describe it is still a good shot.

You could enhance the idea by cloning a set of headphones

Why...is he hard of heron...?
 

[Chris Calohan]

In the .tiff file the eye is much more in focus...jpeg compression doesn't help much. Given the early morning light I was lucky to get this shot.

[Jeremy Roussak]

Why...is he hard of heron...?
 

You know, there are some parts of the world where people would be shot for making a joke like that. Tortured for a while first, of course. Then shot.

 

Jeremy

Great shot, Chris.