{"id":46231,"date":"2017-02-26T06:05:05","date_gmt":"2017-02-26T13:05:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=46231"},"modified":"2017-02-26T06:37:44","modified_gmt":"2017-02-26T13:37:44","slug":"rough-legged-hawk-in-flight-and-a-depth-of-field-mystery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2017\/02\/26\/rough-legged-hawk-in-flight-and-a-depth-of-field-mystery\/","title":{"rendered":"Rough-legged Hawk In flight (and a depth of field mystery…)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Occasionally I take a photograph that seems to defy (my faulty?)\u00a0logic.\u00a0And when\u00a0that happens I probably spend more time pondering over it than I\u00a0should.<\/p>\n

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<\/a><\/p>\n

1\/3200, f\/9, ISO 320, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, canvas added for composition,\u00a0not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

This Rough-legged Hawk image is a case in point. I photographed the bird earlier this month at Farmington Bay WMA not long after it took off from a tree. I like the position of the\u00a0right wing, the fanned tail, the even light on the bird and the good look at that distinctive dark “wrist” on the underside of the\u00a0wing.<\/p>\n

But every time I look at the image I wonder why the trailing edge of the right\u00a0wing is so soft. At this shutter speed it must be a depth of field issue rather than motion blur but at f\/9 and\u00a0without the use of my teleconverter I should have ample DOF so\u00a0it doesn’t make any sense to me. The tip of the right\u00a0wing, the body and what we see of the left wing are all\u00a0sharp and it appears to me that the trailing wing edge has to be at\u00a0some intermediate distance between the right wingtip and what we see of the left wing. So how can that trailing edge be so soft?<\/p>\n

All this made me wonder\u00a0where my focus point locked onto the bird\u00a0so I\u00a0did a little sleuthing (any guesses where the focus point is?)<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I loaded the full-frame image into Digital Photo Professional (software that comes with Canon cameras). Using DPP I can show all 65 focus points available\u00a0on the Canon 7D Mark II. As usual I only had five of them active (the five I’ve marked with a blue “bull’s-eye”) and the focus point that locked onto the bird when\u00a0the photo was taken is outlined in red. That explains why the wingtip is sharp but if the left wing and body are also sharp (and they are) why isn’t the trailing edge of the right wing sharp? I still<\/em> don’t get it!<\/p>\n

Many of my readers are smarter than I am when it comes to the principles and physics\u00a0of photography so any insight would be appreciated.<\/p>\n

I’m probably going to be embarrassed by an easy and obvious explanation but at least I’ll\u00a0have an answer…<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

PS – We finally have the possibility of a few hours of light this morning so I’m going shooting. I’ll respond to any comments\/questions when I get home.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Occasionally I take a photograph that seems to defy (my faulty?) logic. And when that happens I probably spend more time pondering over it than I should.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":46232,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6,334,2782,358],"tags":[2926,534,105,2303,1008,222,269,278],"class_list":["post-46231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-farmington-bay-waterfowl-management-area","category-rough-legged-hawks","tag-active-focus-points","tag-buteo-lagopus","tag-depth-of-field","tag-digital-photo-professional","tag-farmington-bay-waterfowl-management-area","tag-motion-blur","tag-rough-legged-hawk","tag-sharpness"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/rough-legged-hawk-8470-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-c1F","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46231"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46231\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}