This past weekend, I was packing up my gear after sunset and noticed a red-tailed hawk kiting in place not too far from me. So, I opened the camera bag and quickly mounted the 200-500 to my D500 body to make some photos.
Normally in good light, I'm at f/5.6, 1/2000, ISO 400 when photographing birds in-flight. The f-stop delivers enough depth of field and shutter speed usually freezes movement to my liking. But the time was 6:40 pm, the Sun had set behind Mormon Mountain several minutes before, and twilight was descending over the landscape. So, I rolled back the shutter speed to 1/200 second to squeeze more light from the scene. I was also hoping to capture a good amount of wing motion blur while still getting the bird's face reasonably sharp. I increased ISO to 800 to output an image having a reasonable lightness.
Most of the shots are a total mess. But here's one of the few where I managed to keep the bird's face reasonably sharp. Normally, I wouldn't publish a photo showing the nictitating membrane covering the eye. However, I think it adds to the...eerie mood of the lighting and image. I like it and have made a note to myself to not be so hasty about packing up after sunset.
