{"id":97338,"date":"2021-04-20T05:10:00","date_gmt":"2021-04-20T11:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=97338"},"modified":"2021-04-20T05:10:00","modified_gmt":"2021-04-20T11:10:00","slug":"a-gorgeous-dark-morph-red-tailed-hawk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2021\/04\/20\/a-gorgeous-dark-morph-red-tailed-hawk\/","title":{"rendered":"A Gorgeous Dark Morph Red-tailed Hawk"},"content":{"rendered":"

Plus a word to the wise if you ever have to send your camera in for repair.<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/8, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Two days ago I encountered this stunning adult dark morph Red-tailed Hawk in a fairly remote area of northern Utah. When I first pulled up on her she was finishing the last few bites of her vole breakfast. While she was on the ground she stayed partly hidden behind the lichen-covered rock but for me seeing part of such a gorgeous red-tail is at least as rewarding as seeing all of a more typical one.<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/8, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Sadly I clipped at least one wing in several of her flight shots but at least I was able to keep all of her in frame as she lifted off.<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/8, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

When her left wing became fully extended it became evident that she’d lost some flight feathers, probably due to molt.<\/p>\n

I’m including this photo despite the clipped wing for two reasons – I like her flight posture and the photo allows us to see the reasons I’m referring to her as a female. Both her body size and the diameter of her tarsi indicate female to me but that’s a judgment call so I can’t be sure.<\/p>\n

Before I processed these photos the last two weren’t quite as sharp as the first one so during processing I applied 50% more sharpening to them than I did to photo #1. There’s a reason for that, which I’ll explain in the note below.<\/p>\n

Not all readers are interested in that much photo-geek.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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Note to photographers:<\/em><\/p>\n

Readers know that I recently sent both my primary birding lens and my primary birding camera to Canon for repair. The morning I took these photos was the first time I’d used both of them in the field since I got them back.<\/em><\/p>\n

I know from experience that Canon camera technicians usually change at least some camera settings while they’re working on them and they never set them back before returning the camera to its owner. Before leaving on this trip I double-checked my settings and noticed that several of them had been changed so I set them back to my preferences for photographing birds.<\/em><\/p>\n

But I missed one. They had changed my preferred back-button focus<\/a><\/span><\/span> to the more traditional shutter button focus and that messed me up all morning. It meant that when I fired a burst as I followed a bird in flight my active focus point wasn’t refocusing on the bird as it moved into different planes relative to me. The result – sharp shots while the bird was perched but increasingly softer shots as the bird moved into different planes during takeoff.<\/em><\/p>\n

I noticed it about half-way through the morning but it’s a fairly complicated process to change that particular setting back to my preferred one and I couldn’t remember how to do it so I tried to adapt my shooting style to compensate for it with little success. And that’s why the second two shots in this series originally weren’t quite as sharp as the first one. Some of the later ones in the series were even softer.<\/em><\/p>\n

So, a word to the wise. If you ever have to send your camera in for repair be absolutely sure you check your preferred settings, all of them, after you get it back.<\/em><\/p>\n

If you don’t you’ll be sorry. I didn’t and I am.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

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

Plus a word to the wise if you ever have to send your camera in for repair.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":97340,"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":false,"_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":[334],"tags":[2306,452,5720,969,146,1579,451,4480,5719,311],"class_list":["post-97338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","tag-back-button-focus","tag-buteo-jamaicensis","tag-canon-camera-repair","tag-dark-morph","tag-flight","tag-molting","tag-red-tailed-hawk","tag-rufous-morph","tag-talepff","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/red-tailed-hawk-7269-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-pjY","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97338","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=97338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97338\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}