A few Black Skimmers

[ArthurDent]

Here are a few shots I got of Black Skimmers at Clearwater  Beach, FL last week. Any comments /criticisms would be appreciated.
Nikon D500, 70-200mm f/2.8 VR with 1.7x teleconverter

[Randy Stout]

Arthur:

Excellent action captured, some classic skimmer poses.  Good exposure overall, just a couple of hot spots in the whites.

To my eye, the images aren't quite critically sharp.

From a compositional standpoint, too tight in the frame.  Most action bird pictures work better with some room for the bird to fly into.

Makes me want to go back to Florida!

Thanks for sharing.

Randy

[ArthurDent]

Arthur:

Excellent action captured, some classic skimmer poses.  Good exposure overall, just a couple of hot spots in the whites.

To my eye, the images aren't quite critically sharp.

From a compositional standpoint, too tight in the frame.  Most action bird pictures work better with some room for the bird to fly into.

Makes me want to go back to Florida!



Thanks for sharing.

Randy

Thanks for your comments, Randy, very helpful. I don't have Lightroom, so am not able to get numerical values, but in NX-D the lost highlights pane wasn't showing any lost highlights.  I agree that the shots seem to lack a little sharpness. I believe I applied sharpening of 5 to the images in post, so its not from lack of applied sharpening. The camera has a "clarity" setting (a new one to me), which was set to 0 in the camera, as I was unsure as to its effect on the images. Do you have any thoughts on its use? Perhaps I should have set it higher. Also, it could be the camera/lens  combo needs a little fine tuning. Could also be the teleconverter. Any thoughts?

[ArthurDent]

Here's another shot, same camera/lens combo, 1/2000 sec.,  f/4.8, ISO 640. No motion in this one.  Any thoughts on sharpness?

[ArthurDent]

Here are a couple more. They don't seem real sharp to me. Again, comments and criticism much appreciated. I don't think exposure time (1/2000 sec. at f/5.6) is an issue.  VR was on and set to normal. The lens is a 70-200mm f/2.8 and Nikon 1.7x teleconverter. ISO is 720 on both images.  Any thoughts?

[Randy Stout]

Arthur:

What body are you using?

I am not a big fan of the TC1.7, unless stopped down considerably, just not as critically sharp in most cases.

Your shutter speeds seemed fine.

Clarity, at least in LR  world, is a type of micro contrast enhancer.  Can help if used with moderation.

How big of crop are these?  That really can degrade the image quality if the crop is to  large.  I rarely crop beyond 30%, and then only if it is a shot I really like.

If available, a lens like the 80-400 VR (newest version), is a fairly versatile birding lens , esp. on a cropped body.  Light needs to be decent.

Cheers

Randy

[ArthurDent]

Randy- D500. The camera was set at f/5.6 for all shots except one, which was shot at f/4.8. I don't think the shots were excessively cropped, but I'll post the images as they came out of the camera tomorrow. I'm shooting with a 70-200 f/2.8 VR lens which was crystal clear on my D7000. But then I dropped it and had to send it into Nikon for repair. So maybe it came back not as sharp? I'm going to check for front and back focus tomorrow to see if that is perhaps the issue. Thanks for your reply.
AD

[armando_m]

With decent shutter speeds I keep VR off, I do not own the 70-200, but on my lenses with VR it needs time stabilize or it can make images a touch blurry when shooting quickly as it oftens is the case with BIF

[Randy Stout]

Great point by Armando.  VR is rarely needed for BIF, since your shutter speed should already be out of the range were VR is needed.

Arthur: Don't worry about reposting all of them to show the crop, just pick one.

Cheers

Randy

[ArthurDent]

Here is an uncropped image. The lens appears to be correctly calibrated. I put it down to having VR on coupled with the 1.7 teleconverter. Maybe I overcropped as well.

[Randy Stout]

Arthur:

Crop certainly doesn't look to extreme.  It appears that the far wing is slightly sharper than the face, so perhaps the focus point was off the head..  You should be able to check the focus point in NX-D to confirm.

Cheers

Randy