Redtailed hawk, I think..

[mountaindew]

Yesterday at home, I was cleaning out the barn, shoveling hay out of my hay loft. I took a break and decided to drive around for a bit. I'd just gotten the Extender +2.0x the day before, and I wanted to try it out, so I drove around in my truck and saw this hawk sitting in a tree. I think it's a red tailed hawk.

Anyhow, it's NOTHING sharp like Buzzsaw's redtailed hawk. I shot in 100-400 with the TC 2.x. No crop. 1/60 sec., F14, ISO 200. I just wish it was sharper. This was shot hand held. It was hard to use the manual focus and my heart was beating so fast I had a heck of time to keep it steady.

Could use more advice....here they are..

[Steve Foss]

Yep, red-tailed indeed. You did VERY well to get it this sharp, and shouldn't expect much sharper shots with that combo. Somewhat sharp images are possible with the 100-400 and 1.4 TC in excellent light (and the closer you are to the subject the better), but to get sharper than this with the 2 TC and 100-400 is very difficult. The lens just isn't sharp enough to keep excellent image quality with the 2 TC.

Sharpness issues with the lens/TC aside, I would further recommend iso400, simply because you can keep your shutter speed up better that way. And f11 instead of f14 would have helped bump shutter speed too. Iso400 at f11, based on your techs, would have pushed your ss up to 1/250, which would have been a better ss for extreme long range telelphoto.

At any rate, a bit faster shutter speed might have allowed you to get very slightly sharper shots than this, but not by much. It's just that the 2 TC degrades IQ too much for this lens to handle. When I said you did VERY well to get this, I really meant it, especially at 1/60 sec. That's darn fine technique handheld.

The only shots from nature photographers that I've consistently seen that were nicely sharp with the 2 TC were those shot with the fixed focal length 200 and 300mm L lenses.

[mountaindew]

Thanks for the tip. I was afraid of that I wouldn't be able to get it any more sharper. But that's fine. I can get by with that for now. Just wanted to try it out. Its alot more work to use the manual focus! Will try to capture more shots and post later.

Thanks!

[finnbay]

For hand held and 1/60 those are very nice. If I remember correctly, some of your earlier shots were at 100 ISO and this is at 200 ISO. I struggled for a long time with trying to take everything as close to 100 ISO as I could. Worried about noise and image quality. I've finally gotten past that and look at ISO as one of the last adjustments I make. As I'm riding in the car with my camera, I usually have it set at 400 ISO and am more concerned about shutter speed. If I have time to fine tune, okay I will, but for a grab shot I want a good chance to get a good sharp photo so I try to get at least a 1/500 or better. Today's cameras do such a fine job up to at least 800 ISO and some beyond that, that it doesn't bother me to shoot at a higher ISO.

[DMN]

I think the first 2 are at ISO 400 so you may have turned it down or up depending on the order you shot them in, I still like them.

DMN

[mountaindew]

Thanks Guys. Yep, the first 2 are set ISO 400, and then I turned it down to 200 ISO for the next 2 pictures. I figured I'd try tone it down because it's sitting still, and I thought I'd be a sharper picture that way.

I'm getting there..I just need to spend more time outdoors taking pictures!

Thanks again!

[buzzsaw]

F/14 handheld on ISO 200... you are a brave soldier!

You are correct that that is a RT Hawk.