Had the plan to hit up Arsenal for sunset after an offsite meeting. It was pouring rain at the restaurant and was almost enough to make me call it and go home.
Glad I didn’t.
One of the first trees in had the unmistakable silhouette of a hawk perched upon it. The light was pretty flat, dull, and not very interesting. But I was getting close and was ready for the takeoff shot. That takeoff never happened, but what did change was the light.
The clouds broke, and the sun started pouring out over the rockies, lighting this guy up with magic. As it started cawing, I went full continuous high to get the open mouth.
One thing I’ve gotta say about this is the power of the z6’s high ISO settings. This was at ISO 10000, which is about the lowest I shot that day. I could have gone lower in this instance, but I wanted the shutter speed high as I was still hoping for the takeoff shot. Still, that’s zero noise reduction. When printed or moved to any kind of normal resolution, you’re not going to see an ounce of it. I actually think I pushed as high as ISO 26000 that night; I did use a bit of NR at that point, but still. My d700 practically lived at ISO 3200. Massive shout out to Nikon for how good this looks.
The Zootographer 