Learning Lightroom need input

[surge19us]

I manipulated the Osprey's eyes. Here is before and after. Good? Bad? Tips? Improvements? Thanks

Before
http://i461.photobucket.com/albums/qq339/surge19us/_DSC0252-1.jpg

After
http://i461.photobucket.com/albums/qq339/surge19us/_DSC0252-1-2.jpg

After
http://i461.photobucket.com/albums/qq339/surge19us/_DSC0248-1.jpg

[TitusvileSurfer]

The yellow in the eyes is cool but there is no before shot for the 2nd example. I like the edit but the images themselves are rather soft to start with. Either 1/400 @ 200mm with a 1.5x crop factor wasn't enough or the image is a fairly heavy crop. Instead of f/11 I would have used f/5.6 or so. I like shooting birds (in flight) around 1/1000 @ 200mm. I think f/11 was way overkill and you should have used some of that light for shutter speed. They look a little underexposed as well (the first especially), maybe another 2/3 of a stop of light would have helped...or maybe it would be too much it's hard to say. If you shot in RAW it is close enough to be an easy post processing fix (one of the many benefits to shooting RAW, it's useful for more than just white balance). Great moment with the food in talons though.

[surge19us]

I did shoot in RAW and will look at changing the exposure. Thanks. Part of it is I came upon the bird unprepared. The camera was in the bag with the macro on it. So I was driving the boat shooting and changing lens while trying not to spook him. The 200mm shot was a fairly big crop . The before shot on the second is missing because I never uploaded it and it was late I had to get up for work. The first is fairly soft also because I was just swinging around on the boat for a second round of shots and was fairly far out and hitting my own wake. I just kind of like it because its the only shot I got with the bird looking directly at me with both eyes. I do wish I had used a f5.6 or even an f8. It took flight right after the last shot and I manged to get this.
http://i461.photobucket.com/albums/qq339/surge19us/_DSC0253-1.jpg

Here is the before of the second image.
http://i461.photobucket.com/albums/qq339/surge19us/osp1of1.jpg

[BlueCorn]

surge19us - Congratulations for being out there and shooting; that's the first step to becoming a better photographer. I also like how you were able to bring out the eyes during RAW processing. That's a great example of why to shoot RAW. That's the good part.

Being brutally honest, all of these shots are horribly out of focus. Shooting from a moving boat is pretty challenging. You really needed a much higher shutter speed to try to negate some of that movement. I'd have done as TS suggested and used a wider aperture (smaller number) and bumped my ISO up to 400 or 800.

Keep shooting, that's the only way to get better at it.

Cheers

[surge19us]

Thanks Doug and TS. Still learning the camera as well as lightroom. I was happy with the eye mask. After considering the circumstances and what you guys are saying would I be better off shooting shutter priority in these situations where you need to shoot fairly quickly or you may lose the shot? Maybe set for 1/1000 or 1/1250? Then maybe take a shot at ISO 200, 400, 800 if the subject allows?

[TitusvileSurfer]

The only time I shoot shutter priority is if I don't give a flip about depth of field and want a SLOW shutter speed. Of course when that is the case I shoot full manual so...I practically never use shutter priority.

If I am trying to get a fast shutter speed I use full manual or aperture priority. Setting your camera to automatically use the widest aperture in turn gives you the fastest possible shutter speed.

[Roy G. Biv]

Something that helped me out tremendously...

http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/lightroom/articles/lir2am_videotutorials.html