It has been a while since I photographed birds. A couple of weeks ago, I went to a local park to scout for some birds. Although I did not get a good opportunity to photograph small birds, I found a couple of hawks that were willing to somewhat cooperate. The first one let me watch him on an electric pole for a little, right before he dove down to get a dead rabbit:
Too bad he turned the other way…would have been a nice shot. The rabbit was pretty heavy, so he did not make it very far. I guess food was scarce and he just decided to feed off the rabbit carcass. After a short while, he abandoned the carcass and went back to sit on a tree branch:
Looks like a juvenile Swainson’s hawk to me, but could be a rufous morph red-tailed hawk as well.
Here is a shot of a Swainson’s hawk in flight:
About Nasim Mansurov
Hi Nasim,
What should be the ideal settings on the camera if you are shooting birds like Hawks, eagle etc.?
Secondly what is the post processing work flow?
Thanks in advance for helping me.
Regards
Rahul
Rahul, see my “how to photograph birds” article for camera settings. As for workflow, I use Lightroom and Photoshop – check out the post-processing tips page for more info.
Beautiful shots! Could drop a line or two about the lens, basic settings and techinque? That would be most useful. Thanks!!
Thank you Paul! The camera settings are embedded in EXIF data for each image. As for shooting techniques, check out my “how to photograph birds” article, where I go over settings in detail. The lens I used was Nikon 200-400mm f/4.0 VR without any TCs.
Long lens, fast shutter and probably minimal to no postprocess, since they look very natural. Don’t overcomplicate, lol.
Yup, you are absolutely right. Some cropping and sharpening and that’s it!
Wow, cool shots, looks like fun!
When taking this shot with the Nikon 50mm lens, how do get such a close shot with it not being a zoom lens? I have a house at the beach and I’m always taking pictures of pelicans in flight and diving for fish. I just can’t seem to achieve the sharpness of your photos. Until now I have used a 18-200 3.5 lens, but I do have the 50mm 1.4 but haven’t used it because they seem too far away!
Lisa, I did not take the shots with the Nikon 50mm lens – I used a long telephoto Nikon 200-400mm f/4.0 lens for the above images. You would need to use lenses with at least 300mm focal length to capture wild birds, even the 18-200mm would be too short. A good, relatively inexpensive lens to start with would be the Nikon 70-300mm VR.
Hope this helps.
Thank you. I saw the 50mm information under the article with these photo’s and assumed that’s what was used. Thank you for the information and I really enjoy your site and all the valuable information you and your wife provide!
excellent shots. loved em :)