Man, sooner or later they will both show up on the same day. Took the day off to shoot the eagles because we were supposed to be inbetween storms. Did not turn out that way so I wound up shooting at ISO 1600 and ISO 1000 all morning.

Don't tell anyone that I photoshopped the catchlight in this one,

There may not be any sun, but I actually like how the snow looks in the 3rd shot and the bottom one as well (Is that a fish he's swooping after?)

Those are OUTASIGHT man that is great work. I cannot wait to get time off to get up there. The saturation and focus your getting on that 800 is killer. I bet you throw away 400 shots to these .. Nice work. Only another week left and they are gone to...

Thanks Marty, yep time is pressing and the weather isn't helping. The day I shot these shots was the first time I used liveview very much. At 10x it allowed me to really nail the focus. And I could watch the eagle on the larger lcd once I set focus and fire with a remote cord when I got the pose I wanted.

Most surprising is how much me free version of noiseware cleans them up and the large original size means good detail is maintained. I'm finding out that it matters when I apply the NR during processing so I'm still playing with that. See you out there.

Jim,

These are absolutely A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!! The colors are so rich, so saturated and sharp. This is great stuff. Where did you take them?

James

James,

These are shot at the Farminton Bay area off the Great Salt Lake. It's a crazy place because you can have 50 or so eagles flying about yet look a mile or so off and see the interstate and the mass of homes crowding the Wasatch front area.

The lens takes good technique but can deliver. Of course for the first time ever, I sometimes have too much lens as shown with these two uncropped images.





A couple of more from today, the light was finally good.








Hoping for similiar results tomorrow. I want to concentrate of the interaction of the birds tomorrow versus so many feeding shots.

Hi Jim-I finally had good luck Sunday as well- were you in the far lagoon in the AM? I think the frenzy ended around 11:00- I left at noon, got there before dawn.
I will try to post some tonight. I was busy with the printer last night.












i

Yep, I left around 10:30 after the battery in my portable HD died and I ran out of memory. Looking forward to seeing your shots.

Jim, I was watching for your 800 mm lens, sorry I missed you up there. Just what in the heck are you using? All I know (think you said?) a manual focus Nikon 800 and adapter for Cannon 50D? Is that right? Those are really really good shots. Mine required about 50% to be cropped out, we must have been almost in the same spot. Were they out in any force today?

Yeah it's just the manual focus 800 on a 40D. I use live view whenever I can to nail the focus at f/5.6 and then close down to f/8 or f/11 to compensate for a little movement. I was sitting in a pickup right on the edge about two vehicles east of the last little fence there. Had the lens mounted on a window mount with the base on the mount resting on the frame of my window. I don't trust having 12 plus pounds on just the glass.

When I got up this morning it was real overcast here and weather.com said Farmington was cloudy with a storm coming in so I didn't go.

I'm also not a big fan of shooting in crowds and figured with the federal holiday a lot of folks would be there again.