Immature Swainson’s Hawk in flight after lifting off from a gravel road – Nikon D810, f7.1, 1/1600, ISO 640, +0.7 EV, Nikkor 500mm VR, natural light, not baited
I shared an old post with a scenic photo of Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge yesterday on my Facebook timeline and because I did I wanted to scroll through my photos from that trip and I found a series of images of an immature Swainson’s Hawk I’d photographed exactly five years ago today. I remember that the light that afternoon was constantly changing and since it varied from one second to the next that meant that I had to be on my toes and that I changed my settings quite often.
Because I photograph in aperture priority the settings I change the most are my aperture, exposure and ISO and if I change any of those it affects my shutter speed.
Prior to taking the photo above of the young Swainson’s Hawk in flight the hawk had been on the ground on the gravel road and I could tell that it was going to take off so I bumped up my ISO to have a shutter speed at or above 1/1500 because I’ve found that works well to freeze the motion of the wings of these raptors most of the time. I also bumped up my exposure setting to +0.7 because it was a bit dark at the time due to the clouds. What I ended up with was a well exposed, sharp flight photo of this young raptor where the motion of the wings is frozen.
Immature Swainson’s Hawk close up in low light – Nikon D810, f8, 1/800, ISO 1000, +1.0 EV, Nikkor 500mm VR, natural light, not baited
When the young Swainson’s Hawk landed on a fence post nearby I knew I needed to change my settings again because it was so close and since I wanted more depth of field so I bumped up my ISO to 1000 to gain shutter speed in case the raptor moved on the fence post and at f8 I had sufficient depth of field.
My Nikon D810 handles higher ISO’s and noise extremely well so I wasn’t concerned about noise but even at ISO 1000 this young Swainson’s is sharply in focus and nicely exposed, in fact I could have used a higher ISO.
Immature Swainson’s Hawk in a lift off pose – Nikon D810, f7.1, 1/250, ISO 250, +0.7 EV, Nikkor 500mm VR, natural light, not baited
When the light was better I was able to lower my ISO and have enough shutter speed to get the sharpness and details that I was after but for this particular series of images of the young hawk though I dropped it too low because right after this photo was taken the immature Swainson’s lifted off and with a shutter speed of 1/250 all I got were out of focus blurs from that lift off series!
Live and learn.
Immature Swainson’s Hawk with an eye on the sky – Nikon D810, f10, 1/2500, ISO 800, -0.7 EV, Nikkor 500mm VR with 1.4x TC, natural light, not baited
When the immature Swainson’s was perched on this fence post in front of some mountains with low clouds I decided to keep my ISO & shutter speed high because the light was changing rapidly and I wasn’t sure what the hawk was going to do.
This photo session with an immature Swainson’s Hawk reinforced how as a bird photographer I need to not only be keenly aware of changing light it also showed how I may need to quickly change my settings to get the photos I want.
Sorry if I seem a little scattered this morning, I was having server issues while trying to write this post.
Life is good.
Mia
Click here to see more of my Swainson’s Hawk photos plus facts and information about this species.
Once again, great images! You might want to try auto-iso in full manual. Steve Perry recommends this and it has worked very well for me.
Beautiful bird! Good work with the settings. You can’t go to sleep at the wheel and keep the shots sharp and properly exposed. Bird photography is better mental exercise than the “keep your brain from aging” games on the web.
WHAT a beauty.
Many, many thanks.
I love how I can see the fluffiness of its young feathers in those close-up shots and the sharpness overall in the flight shots. You are reminding me that I need to get out and practise because I had a lot of motion blur due to too low of an ISO and shutter speed this past summer.
WOW, WOW, WOW!!! Just beautiful, wish we had Swainson’s here.