I'm starting to not hate my D80 that much.

I would use AF-C. I was just checking the new stuff out. And I did learn something: AF-A won't fire without locking focus. You'll miss some shots, but the ones you get are better.

I didn't know "pump the shutter" was a for real technique. I've found myself doing it, but wasn't sure I was supposed to. I like it though. I haven't read anything about it anywhere. I worried that it might slow things down. But I think it make things more accurate.

Thanks for the info,

Bob

If you mean those red areas on the throat, those are blown highlights of its markings. They're actually like little reflectors, and they can be very vivid when they catch the light. Usually I try to catch them like that when they flash, but in this occasion they blew out so totally there was nothing I could do to recover them.

Here's a look with flash:



Thanks,

Bob

cr697 said:

Bob,

I've been looking at your D80 gallery. The picture DSC_0095.jpg has
some odd spots on the bird. What's that?
--
Christopher

Click to expand...

You know your boids.

This is the original of the hawk picture, with no pp



In camera, contrast was set to normal, saturation was +1.

I think I got kind of lucky with the lighting. The sun was very low, and the angle lit the guy up pretty well, and still raked accross him pretty well. Made for a fair amount of contrast.

Thanks again,

Bob

I am new to digital photography but not to Photoshop, having used it to play with scanned-in trannies. Do I have to have Capture NX as well as Photoshop in order to process NEF files without losing quality? What if I just export them as TIFF's from PictureProject and work on those in Photoshop?

I don't know much about Photoshop, but I think this might answer your question.

http://www.dpreview.com/news/0610/06100601acr36beta.asp

Bob