Images Taken on an Older Camera

In November 2003 while on an evening run at Coyote Hills Nature Preserve in Fremont, CA I noticed an unusually large number of Red Tail Hawks. The hawks were utilizing the updraft from the bay to hover and hunt along the hills. The moon had risen high above the hills. I immediately visualized this image. Knowing that the moon rises almost an hour later each day, I determined it would be just above the top of the hills if I returned the following day at the same time. When I returned the next day, the hawks were still there and as calculated the moon was just rising above the hills.
The camera I was using at the time was my first DSLR, a 6 Mp Pentax *ist. Attached to the camera with an adapter I had a Pentax 645 300mm f4 with 1.4 converter giving me the equivalent of 630mm focal length. This was a manual focus lens. I set the camera in the manual exposure mode, ISO 400, 1/125 sec and an aperture of f22 for DOF to preserve some of the detail in the moon. Unfortunately, I had left my spare memory cards at home and had to shoot in jpeg mode instead of RAW. At the time, the memory card in the camera would have held only 12 RAW images as opposed to almost 70 in JPEG.

I then proceeded to run up and down the hills attempting to line up a hawk with the moon, but invariably as soon as I had focused, the hawk would move requiring me to reposition. Around the time that I was losing the light and my legs were about to give out I finally got my shot. I then ran the half mile to the parking area to get back to my car before they locked the gates for the night.

The image was processed originally in Photoshop. Over the years I have tried several techniques and new software to try to get more out of the image. The current version was processed in Lightroom, cropped and then run through Topaz Gigapixel AI to reduce noise, sharpen and upscale the image.

Today I shoot with a Canon R5. Fast reliable autofocus, better high ISO performance, along with 20 fps and higher resolution would have made getting the shot and processing much easier. Higher capacity memory cards (if I remember to bring them) would have allowed me to shoot in RAW. I still would have to run up and down the hills. Maybe some exoskeleton powered hiking pants should be my next gear investment.

Unfortunately in the last 20 plus years I have not found conditions favorable to repeat the shot.