Northern Harrier (a.k.a. Marsh Hawk?), Great Swamp NWR, New Jersey. Canon Elan IIE, Tokina 400/5.6 AT-X at f/5.6, Kodak Elite Chrome 200 rated at 320 and pushed 1 stop.

-- Matt Hagadorn (hagadorn@eclipse.net), December 11, 1998

Answers

Congratulations on capturing a tough subject. I admire folks who can catch raptors in flight with a reasonably large subject area. Would it better if the bird were sharper, yes. Would it better if the background was more contrasty with the bird, yes. But you can't very control where the bird will be when you have an opportunity to shoot. So, all in all, good job.

-- Ted Hendy (hendy@c2i2.com), December 11, 1998.

Nice shot, and not one that's easy to get in the Great Swamp. However the lack of sharpness is evident even in this scan, so either the scan is bad, or the original is very soft. That drops it from a 7 or 8 down to about a 4.

-- Bob Atkins (bobatkins@hotmail.com), December 12, 1998.

Matt -

I try to shoot this type of thing too. Relative to Bob's answer if the softness is not in the scan is it due to the autofocus not keeping up? Camera or Lens? I have the same Tokina on a Minolta but so far have not gotten a large bird like this to fly by at that attitude. I have tracked R/C model airplanes (sorry not nature) of similar size and it seems to do OK with them. I do have to set on one center sensor and really track accurately to keep the small body in focus.

Looks like fun.

Ben

-- Ben Lanterman (benl@anet-stl.com), December 14, 1998.

Thanks for the comments. The scan is just fine -- the bird isn't quite sharp on the slide. Still, I wanted to know what people thought otherwise. I don't know if the lack of focus was because of the camera/lense not being able to keep up, my inexperience with shooting a bird in flight (i.e., I just plain missed), or simply too slow a shutter speed (my guess is it was around 1/90 - 1/125). I've just upgraded to an EOS 5 so it will be interesting to see if it can track focus better with the Tokina.

-- Matt Hagadorn (hagadorn@eclipse.net), December 14, 1998.