![\"northern](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/northern-harriier-0859-ron-dudley.jpg\")
<\/p>\nI’ve said before that plain sky backgrounds in flight shots aren’t my preference.\u00a0 But habitat in the background provides its own challenges for the photographer.<\/p>\n
With my Canon 500 mm f\/4 lens, attached 1.4 teleconverter and the 1.6 crop factor of the Canon 7D I’m effectively shooting at 1120 mm (500mm x 1.4 x 1.6)\u00a0which gives me extremely shallow depth of field.\u00a0 For example, if I’m 50′ from my subject and shooting at f\/6.3 my total DOF for good sharpness is about 4″ (which explains part of the reason why sharp focus is so critical with telephoto lenses).\u00a0 My lens is known for\u00a0the pleasing\u00a0bokeh it produces\u00a0when background elements are out of focus but I don’t get many “bird in habitat” (BIH)\u00a0 flight images where the\u00a0setting elements are relatively sharp because of that lack of DOF.\u00a0\u00a0Larger birds in particular\u00a0just don’t often fly that close to vegetation and when they do it’s difficult to keep focus\u00a0locked onto them in flight because the background is so close.<\/p>\n
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\u00a01\/1600, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n This is one of those fairly unusual times that I was able to get the vegetation behind a bird in flight relatively sharp because the juvenile male (yellow eyes)\u00a0Northern Harrier flew so close to the phrags that its right wing must have almost brushed them.<\/p>\n I like seeing images like this but there’s a couple of\u00a0potential tradeoffs,\u00a0depending on individual tastes.\u00a0 With the vegetation so close and fairly\u00a0sharp there’s the danger that it will distract from the bird.\u00a0 Then the decision must be made about how to crop the image.\u00a0 Cropping tight\u00a0focuses the viewer’s attention on the bird but minimizes the habitat that you may want to\u00a0emphasize to some degree.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00a01\/1250, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Here’s the other extreme.\u00a0 This image was taken within a half hour of the first one and in the same habitat (phragmites and snow) but the phrags are far enough away that they’re a complete blur.\u00a0 In addition the tight crop on the harrier focuses our\u00a0attention almost entirely\u00a0on the bird.\u00a0 And notice the DOF here – that softness of the wingtips isn’t motion blur.<\/p>\n Two shots, same gear, same general habitat, very similar settings and\u00a0almost identical flight postures and light.\u00a0 But the “styles” of the two images are\u00a0very different and that difference is largely due to DOF and distance from the background elements, though I was also somewhat\u00a0closer to the bird in the second image.<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n Note:\u00a0 Here’s a link to an excellent DOF calculator<\/a>.\u00a0 I’ve provided this link before but some may have missed it.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’ve said before that plain sky backgrounds in flight shots aren’t my preference. But habitat in the background provides its own challenges for the photographer.<\/p>\n![\"northern](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/northern-harrier-1277-ron-dudley.jpg\")
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