Bird Watching: Bald Eagle - Our National Symbol - Vol. #7, 1 by linthicum

linthicum wrote:
Thanks, all.

duc, I don't do it intentionally but my photo software (Photo Explosion Deluxe) has a crop feature and a trim feature. If I use the crop feature, it retains the EXIF information. For whatever reason, I started using the Trim feature which doesn't retain the info. The last two times I have visited Conowingo, I have used the following settings: Manual control with a shutter speed of 1/1600 sec, aperture of f/8, ISO 400, exposure compensation of -0.7 and spot metering mode. I was using Aperture priority but constantly had poor results with non-sky shots with a moving Bald Eagle. Still shots were fine. Sky shots were okay. But, on aperture priority the shutter speed would be too slow for a moving subject and the photos were blurred. I don't want to use an ISO above 400 because of noise. Still shots obviously allow you to try several settings but with fast moving Bald Eagles, you don't have that luxury.

I mentioned that I see a lot of Bald Eagles lose their fish. I took this following series of 4 photos probably within one second. In each photo, the fish is still out of the water. The eagle lost the fish because when he snagged it from the water it appears that he ripped the entire head off. Here is the first one.